by Michael Duca and Morris Phillips

BERKELEY–Are the Cal Bears the team that lost two games in a row in Los Angeles over the weekend and kind of fell out of the picture? Yes they are. They are both, they are and so much more, the loss to UCLA was no surprise. UCLA has an exremely good under performing team this year and on their home court, the last time Cal beat them on their home court it was very long ago.

USC was explicable and inexcusable, it was a team that has not won a single game in conference all year and went out and demonstrated yet again later in the weekend folding against Stanford. You might lose a game against a team like that and they explode and catch fire 73% for the night but SC didn’t do that all they did was go out and jump off to an early lead and held it all night.

You can not allow something like that to happen if your a strong contending team for a conference championship, the Pac 12 is among the strongest basketball conferences in the nation this year they will get at least six teams in the tournament and unless something drastic happens in the second half of the sesaon Cal is probably going to be second or third Pac 12 team.

That’s impressive because they obviously came into the season picked sixth or seven behind Stanford, Arizona State, and the one surge with the win streak allowed them to kind of put themselves on the map. What can be expected, is Jabari Bird going to be a factor? Can Richard Solomon continue to produce? Will the Bears rely too much on Justin Cobbs?

Bird will be a minor factor, we knew that all along, anybody who listened to Cal head coach Mike Montgomery he told everybody before the first tip off in the first practice Bird will play but he’s not going to be as big and effective as everybody wants him to be. He is the local kid that everybody has heard about.

That’s not how things work in Montyland, freshman don’t get to play a huge role, they get to play A role, and they get to become comfortable at the faster pace of the NCAA game in front of the hostile crowds that they never really faced in high school. How many hostile crowds did Jabari face in high school going around in the Bay Area?

Seriously, so Montgomery knows what he’s doing and Montgomery is the reason that Cal was picked sixth or seventh than second in the conference because everybody looked at players and nobody looked at the coaches which is why their ahead of Stanford or Arizona State who they were picked to be behind. It’s always impressive because obviously Montgomery is not the only wonderful coach in the Pac 12 currently it’s a conference full of great coaches.

Michael Duca and Morris Phillips do Cal Bears basketball commentary each week for Sportstalk radio