By Morris Phillips

Gifted a third chance to gain a sixth win, bowl eligibility, and an important exclamation point to a bounce-back season, the Cal Bears came up short, losing to BYU in the final moments of their season finale at Strawberry Canyon.

Like just about everything that has gone on inside the Cal football program over the last three seasons, the result was hard to swallow.  The Bears failed to win any of their final five home games, and in addition, simply didn’t play well against rivals USC and Stanford in their previous two games.  But against BYU, the Bears were in a nip-and-tuck battle, holding seven-point leads in the second and third quarters, only to come up short when Christian Stewart connected with Jordan Leslie for a 38-yard touchdown catch with 2:39 remaining in the game.

Making the result even more painful was Cal’s final drive in which quarterback Jared Goff threw incomplete into the end zone on his final four attempts.  Trying to maximize his opportunity to tie the game and send it into overtime, Goff threw to talented, red zone receiver Kenny Lawler on all four plays.  But BYU proved capable, breaking up all four plays and fighting threw the fatigue of defending Cal on 14 snaps in the final minutes of the game.

“We didn’t have any timeouts left, so they had a good feeling that we had to pass the ball,” Goff said.  “They played good coverage and dropped a lot of people.  I was trying to find a hole in there, trying to throw it up to Kenny and see if he could make a play.”

“At the end of the day, our guys in the secondary made plays,” BYU coach Bronco Mendenhall recounted.  “We dropped eight four straight times.  We got just enough pressure, the secondary held and made critical plays at the right time, and that’s what I’ll remember.

In contrast to BYU’s heroic last stand, the Bears allowed Stewart to throw two fourth quarter touchdowns to basically, wide open receivers to propel the Cougars to a fourth-straight win.

“To come up short is real disappointing,” Stefan McClure said.  “But I couldn’t be more proud of my teammates—just the way they fought every single game.  We fought all the way to the last play.  We went out swinging.”

The Bears finished the season (5-7, 2-5 in the Pac-12) with losses in six of their final seven games after a promising 4-1 start that included wins over Northwestern and Washington State.  But few of the Bears’ successes happened in front of their fans at Memorial Stadium.  Instead, Cal suffered narrow losses to UCLA and BYU at home as well as lopsided performances against Washington (31-7) and Stanford (38-17).   Against BYU, the Bears entertained with 566 yards in total offense, and did so by running 1o1 offensive plays, which should have crippling to the BYU defense.

Instead, the Cal defensive group grew tired, allowing 540 yards and the two critical, fourth quarter touchdowns.

“We were close this year at times to really becoming a good football team, but ultimately just couldn’t,” Coach Sonny Dykes admitted.  “We made too many mistakes to overcome it, and that cost us tonight.  We gave up too many big plays, defensively.  We had a hard time stopping them at the end of the ballgame.  I think it’s pretty obvious what we have to improve.  We’ve certainly got to get better on the back end of our defense.  We know that.  We’ll work very hard to do that with our players.  We’ll address some of those issues with recruiting and just continue to develop the players we have.”

It just now, the Bears will have to do all that beginning with spring practice, as the 12 to 15 additional practices and additional game at the end of this season have evaporated.