Here comes the Hammer down on Northwestern Wildcats football, courtesy of the Cal Golden Bears. The boys from Berkley looked 2 Legit 2 Quit as they hit NU with a dose of Oaktown power “and charge you by the hour” as they were “shakin like a quake,” right from kickoff.
“California, California..knows how to pass. Knows how to pass,” as QB Jared Goff was 12-18 for 186 yards and 3 TDs in the first half.
Last year, the (Univ of) California was …”the state where you never find a loss column empty.” Their only win in a 1-11 season was over FCS foe Portland State. In 2013, Cal Football was in a state about as favorable as MC Hammer’s finances.
However, the first half in Evanston saw Sonny Dykes, Goff and company saying:
“we don’t know defeat we crush the strong and
percolate the weak daily (everyday) we make our moves to
improve our groove because we love to rule where we
lay yo!..(Yo!) work and play we started at the bottom and
now we’re leading the way
Walnut Creek’s Pac 12 Team jumped out to a 24-7 second quarter lead, and never looked back. Although NU made it interesting for awhile in the second half. Storming all the way back to make it a one possession game with the ball in the 4th quarter. However, a Trevor Siemian INT inside two minutes sealed the deal.
While 2013 resembled the darkness of the bowl-less Tom Holmoe era, today’s Cal Golden Bears look like the program that went to seven straight bowls under Jeff Tedford. Cal had almost double the yardage of Northwestern in the first half, and given the way last year’s meeting went (that whole controversy with Dykes accusing his counterpart, NU’s Pat Fitzgerald, of faking injuries to slow down the Cal Golden Bears tempo) you knew that whatever team got the upper hand in this one was going to run the up score if given the opportunity.
We’ll be back here with postgame reaction from both coaches about that; especially pertaining to the postgame handshake.
We’ll also update this post with quotes from Cal Golden Bears players, Cal Golden Bears coaches, postgame statistics and much much more.
Paul M. Banks owns and operates The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with Fox Sports, Yahoo! and the Chicago Tribune RedEye edition. He’s been a guest on news talk shows all across the world and been featured in hundreds of media outlets including NFL Network, Fox Sports 1 and ESPN2. Follow him on Twitter (@paulmbanks)