by Michael Duca and Morris Phillips

BERKELEY–At the time that the Cal Bears were the worst 10-1 team in the nation and they got out and dropped three out of four since that time surprisingly the win came against a ranked team. The loses came against a couple of terrible teams Bakersfield which was at an RPI of 340 and Washington State who had an RPI of 210. So what’s going on?

It was a deceptively fast 10-1 start if you look at the RIP numbers of the teams that they’ve beaten your looking at Syracuse and Eastern Washington 1-2 obviously Washington is the most recent win 81-75 that is best win of the season but prior to that Syracuse, Eastern Washington being ahead of Syracuse as the Orange are not having a good year (10-4). Once again these teams are just flawlessly scheduled.

The thing is a college basketball team has all the control over all of their none conference games and no control over their conference schedule. It’s like day and night which why Cal plays on Wednesday night right after they play on Sunday. The schedule is going to where them down, their thin their still missing Jabari Bird and there’s a lot of potential there.

It’s definitely potential that Cal is going to realize Cal is not sure if their going to see Bird again this season. He was in a boot and what the severity of it is is still a mystery. Stress factures of the foot have a strange way of healing, first of all they have a funny way of happening to the Cal Bears the team seems to have lower leg injuries every year that take out a player and just destroy the mix.

The Bears in particular the best that probably happen for them is to figure out early on if their not going to go anywhere this year and get some serious playing time for guys who deserve it in order to develop. Christian Behrens is not a player, there’s just no two ways about it he brings them nothing on offense Washington State can figure that out they let him shoot anytime he wanted to ten feet and out and he doesn’t have the physical presence or the confidence in those knees to mix it up underneath on defense.

So let’s get some more playing time for Kingsley Okoroh, and that was a great move against Washington to play Okoroh to play Roger Moute a Bidas and both those guys have a real defense presence and a way to help the team this year. Obviously going forward they have a lot more potential and we don’t want to knock any of these kids individually but Behrens needs to play less. The Bears realize that and he finally played 17 minutes against Washington on Friday night.

Listen to the podcast wtih Morris Phillips and Michael Duca who cover Cal Bears basketball for http://www.sportsradioservice.com