With Lofty Ranking, Bears Hope to Defend Home Turf

The last time Oregon State has visited Memorial Stadium, the Cal football team was such a gracious host that it let its guest leave town with a victory. In fact, the Beavers haven’t gone home unhappy since 1997.

In 2003, Oregon State capitalized on a Bears team still flush from its upset over USC and in 2005, Beavers running back Yvenson Bernard ran all over the Cal defense, carrying the ball 42 times for 194 yards, the most that the Bears gave up all season.

“I lost to them once, and that was enough,” junior linebacker Worrell Williams said. “They came in here and actually embarrassed us, really. Yvenson had almost 200 yards on us or something ridiculous, and I had a big hand in that so I want to change that around.”

While No. 2 Cal (5-0, 2-0 in the Pac-10) is still a work in progress as far as stopping the run (sixth in the conference, allowing 120.2 yards per game), Oregon State (3-3, 1-2) still has Bernard and now possesses the nation’s top rushing defense, allowing 43.3 yards on the ground per game.

“I think the growth of our whole defensive front has been pretty evident,” Beavers coach Mike Riley said. “In our spring practice (and) fall camp, it’s really hard for us to rush against us and that’s a pretty good indicator because we’re pretty good at running the ball.”

Oregon State has had to be good at running the ball this season, especially considering the struggles of first-year starting quarterback Sean Canfield.

He leads the nation with 13 interceptions and has been sacked as many times as he has thrown touchdown passes—seven.

“(He’s) better, improving and still inconsistent,” Riley said. “I’m just looking for continued growth.”

The Beavers have successively lowered Canfield’s passing attempts in each of his past three games and correspondingly increased the load on Bernard. Canfield’s attempts have dropped from 48 to 35 to 30 while Bernard’s carries have been upped from 24 to 27 to 32.

The key to stopping the Oregon State attack will be to restrain Bernard to the point where Canfield forces his hand in the passing game. But stopping Bernard could be easier said than done. The senior averages 107 yards per game, good for third in the Pac-10.

“He’s a smart runner, and smart runners don’t take a lot of hits,” Williams said. “He’s shifty, he’s strong, so you’ve got to wrap him up, and he knows the game. You can tell by the way he runs. He knows where he’s going to be attacked from. We just need to get after him, wrap him up and make some good tackles.”

If Cal can stop Bernard, the dominoes should fall right on top of Canfield.

“He has us licking our chops,” Williams said. “If we put a little pressure on him, and get him in a bad situation, he might give one of those (interceptions) to us.”

The one thing the two teams will have in common is their appetite for the quarterback. While Williams and other linebackers are licking their chops, the physical pass rush of the Beavers—which has picked up a conference-best 25 sacks—will try to feast on a one-legged Nate Longshore. The junior Bears quarterback has been nursing a sprained ankle the past two weeks.

“Schematically they’re very good. They move a lot, they twist a lot, they have some different schemes that they show you,” Cal coach Jeff Tedford said. “But they come very, very hard. Their guys are relentless in their rush, and they’re very athletic and they’re very good at what they do.”

Despite a strong pass rush, however, Oregon State does have a soft underbelly that Longshore, Hawkins and the rest of the offensive playmakers can exploit—the secondary. They are fifth in the conference in passing defense, one spot better than the No. 9 Ducks, who the Bears beat 31-24 when they last saw action on Sept. 29.

“(The secondary) looks the same as anybody else,” said Hawkins, who is part of Cal’s trio of the conference’s fastest receivers. “They got a good D, but I still feel like if we do our job, we can win. We just have to do our job.”

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