By Morris Phillips

BERKELEY, CA–After a satisfying Senior Day win over Oregon State at Memorial Stadium, James Looney made his and his teammates’ intentions clear. The Bears have some unfinished business in their remaining games.

“We gotta get one more, get to bowling. We want to get two more, get the Axe for sure,” Looney said with teammate Raymond Davison III joining him in the postgame presser and giving his tacit approval of Looney’s bold statement.

One year after allowing 40 points per game, finishing 5-7, and enduring an oddly timed coaching change, the Bears have bold intentions to post a winning record in the face of prognosticators that felt Cal was capable of winning just two games in 2017.

Instead the Bears are 5-5 leading into their final two contests at Stanford and at UCLA, two opponents that lost this weekend while the Bears picked up a critical 37-23 win over OSU. A bye week comes first, a coveted break ahead of Cal trying to break a six-game losing streak to rival Stanford.

“It’s great to be in a position to earn ourselves another game,”  said quarterback Ross Bowers, who led Cal with 24 of 30 passing for 259 yards and two touchdowns. “This bye week is going to be huge for us. We can get in the mindset that ‘it’s just a bye week,’ but we have to get significantly better in whatever the little things are and then get ready for our next game.”

On Saturday, the Bears showed the persistence against OSU that was clearly lacking in the previous week’s disappointing loss at Colorado.  After the Beavers struck first with an option pass play to Ryan Nall for a touchdown less than four minutes in, Cal responded with consecutive scoring drives for a 17-7, second quarter lead, and then a 20-13, halftime advantage.

As have all of Cal victims this season, Oregon State got a heavy dose of running back Patrick Laird, who finished with 214 yards rushing on 33 carries. Laird’s big day served as the perfect counterpoint to Nall’s 224-yard rushing performance last season in the Bears’ most disappointing loss of 2016. Nall, OSU’s talented, big back had never surpassed 200 yards in a game before or after his breakout against Cal, that featured a trio of big, back breaking runs. This time, the improved Bears’ defense held Nall to 89 yards rushing and receiving combined, and limited his big plays to the 26-yard touchdown that gave OSU their only lead.

“We were going to be committed to stopping the run and we played a lot of heavy-run fronts,” Coach Justin Wilcox said of his team’s approach to stopping Nall. “He [Ryan Nall] hit some runs and he is going to earn some.”

Meanwhile, Laird was merely consistent, handling the ball on a career-high 33 carries along with six pass receptions, none of which went for more than 20 yards. Laird kept the chains moving on a day in which the Bears had 10 possessions, none of which concluded with a punt.

The Bears scored on three consecutive possessions again in the second half, extending their lead to 37-20 with 10:30 remaining.