Over halfway through the 2009 season, a number of questions about the Cal football team have been answered, while a would-be standard one has not.

For starters, this is not the year that the Bears contend with USC for the Pac-10 title -- that was answered four weeks ago, when Cal was dominated by the Trojans at home. The defense is not as strong as it was last year. Good opposing defenses can be successful by making the Bears pass.

Barring a series of miracles, Jahvid Best is not going to be a Heisman Trophy candidate at the end of the season.

All that said, Cal is 5-2, with the best scoring offense in the Pac-10 and its two toughest conference games already in the past.

It all rolls into the great unanswered question about this team, which will become a lot clearer after Saturday's 12:30 p.m., meeting with Arizona State at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Ariz.

Who exactly are these Bears?

"We've kind of seen opposite sides of Cal at times," linebacker Mike Mohamed said. "The biggest thing is, can we get the explosive Cal out there? The Cal that scores points early in the first quarter and then the defense shuts guys down."

Those Bears have shown up in five of the team's seven games this year, including their two Pac-10 wins over UCLA and Washington State -- the only two winless teams in the conference -- which they won by a combined score of 94-43.

The other Cal, the one whose offense struggles mightily to move the ball and whose defense allows yards by the bundle, reared its ugly head in the Bears' only two losses of the year, which came against Pac-10 frontrunners USC and Oregon.

Right now, Cal (5-2, 2-2 in the conference) appears to stand somewhere in the middle, which makes the Sun Devils (4-3, 2-2) an effective measuring stick. Currently tied with Cal in fifth place in the Pac-10, Arizona State is another team mired in the middle of the conference race that happens to have the sixth-best rushing defense in the nation.

"It's the biggest game so far this year, that's for sure, in where we're at and what their defense has done," quarterback Kevin Riley said. "(We're) facing a better team than we have these past two weeks and we're going to have to play well. Like I said, since the bye week, this will show us how much we've grown as a team."

In those two games since the bye, the Bears have averaged 299 yards on the ground. But Best and the running attack were bottled up in their losses to the Ducks and the Trojans, and coach Jeff Tedford said earlier this week that the Sun Devils' defense is comparable to that of USC in its speed and athleticism.

That's enough to set off alarm bells in the collective heads of any offense, which is why Tedford is preaching the importance of staying patient this weekend and moving the ball through short gains rather than big plays -- something that Best acknowledged might be easier said than done.

"But the thing you've got to remember is those two-to-three-yard gains are going to turn into four-to-six," Best said. "And then if you keep doing what you're doing, they'll turn into six-to-eight, and then you can break one."

Arizona State's offense, meanwhile, is seventh in the Pac-10 in scoring and might be missing tailback Dmitri Nance on Saturday. Then again, Cal's defense -- projected to be the team's strongest unit -- hasn't allowed less than 440 yards in any of its last four games, including two against less-than-stellar offenses in the Bruins and Cougars.

It's puzzling. But then, as defensive end Tyson Alualu said, Saturday is an opportunity for the Bears to "see what we're all about."

"It's definitely going to test us," Alualu said. "And we'll see where we stand after this game."

Tags: JAHVID BEST, ARIZONA STATE, KEVIN RILEY, JEFF TEDFORD, CAL, CALIFORNIA GOLDEN BEARS, CAL FOOTBALL