February 11, 2009

Battle of the Bay, Cal viewpoints

Just three more days before Act II of the Battle of the Bay, and the hype begins with some media reports from Berkeley.

In her weekly press conference, coach Joanne Boyle begins, "We are looking forward to this weekend. It's going to be a great matchup between two top teams and we're going to throw the record books out the window. It's obviously a tougher situation going over there to play them but we're going to have a good week of prep to get ready to play a big game will be huge." Read more...

Jimmy Tran (The Daily Californian) discusses what the Bears have done since their last encounter with Stanford. He has not thrown out the record book, and cites Cal's national ranking in various statistics to support his conclusions that, "As a team, the Bears are getting it done ... defense, without a doubt, has been the mantra of the squad this season." Read more...

Boyle is right to throw out the record book -- statistics don't win a game. But they are interesting.

This is where Stanford and Cal stand in the various statistics Tran cited in his article. The information is from the NCAA for games through Feb 8th. The number in parentheses is the national ranking.

Statistic Stanford California
Points scored 77.5 (10) 69.6 (51)
Points allowed 55.3 (27) 53.2 (9)
Scoring margin 22.1 (3) 16.4 (12)
Field goal percentage 46.4 (4) 44.9 (20)
Field goal % allowed 34.1 (7) 35.6 (28)
Three-point percentage 31.9 (138) 37.0 (15)
Rebounds 44.6 (n/a) 38.8 (n/a)
Rebounds allowed 31.4 (n/a) 31.3 (n/a)
Rebound margin 13.2 (1) 7.5 (18)

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