Gamenight! Again! Finally!
It's finally Gamenight on a Saturday again for Oregon State. After a bye and last week's Friday excursion to Seattle, the Beavers are set to play their first Saturday game in 3 weeks. It's also gamenight (vs game day) again, for the 9th time this season.
The Pac-12 is clearly counting on the Ducks to blow the Huskies out of Autzen by halftime, so that the rest of the conference audience will switch over to the Bears and Beavers. The conference could have set kickoff as early as 4:30 (as the slot was originally scheduled for), but pushed it back. At least those hoping to catch Utah or UCLA in their entirety without having to rely on replay can hope the Beavers also blow out the Bears by the break.
Based on Cal's ability to hang around in games they ultimately lose, Oregon State's lack of a passing game, and the Beavers' documented ability to fail to take the Bears seriously (see last season's 2 touchdown monument to lack of institutional preparation loss), it's entirely possibly Oski won't have walked out on his team by halftime though.
It's up to the Beavers, and Beaver nation, to make sure that doesn't happen again, though. Even if they don't cover the surprisingly large spread given the OSU QB situation. Which is certainly a possibility if Cal successfully shortens the game as much with freshman RB Jaydin Ott as Oregon State might with freshman RB Damien Martinez.
Any thought or mention of any Oregon State Gameday that's anywhere near Veterans' Day that doesn't include a throwback to the biggest Veterans' Day game in Corvallis ever, the 3-0 win over USC in 1967. But that (combined with the afore mentioned melt down last year in Strawberry Canyon, which unlike the '67 game, the current players and coaching staff were actually alive for) should also be sufficient additional motivation to fire up the Beavers for the emotional salute to veterans. The cool logo acknowledging veterans on the helmets should help with that as well.
After last weekend's slip-up in Seattle, which put Coach Smith's checklist checkoff tour on hold, its also a chance to equal last year's win total with still 3 more games to go. Another check box sorely needing to be checked off. Being in Reser, where the Beavers have run off 9 wins in their last 10 home games, a soldout crowd (for Cal! - check box checkoff alert), even throttled by construction, should help a lot.
Oregon State has won 9 of their last 10 games at Reser, and is 6-0 this season when favored, which they are by 2 touchdowns against a Bears team that has lost 5 games in a row, and hasn;t won a game outside the Bay Area in 3 years.
So its a great game day and night, the next to last home one for the season, to make it a really great game day and night. One that keeps the Cal band off the field. Maybe even enduce a Cal clipboard throwing contest! And make sure the memory of this November game people will remmeber is a chain-saw sound laced one.
Go Beavers!
Andy_Wooldridge@yahoo.com