BYU (6-5) at California (7-4) December 22 Las Vegas Bowl 8:00 pm EST
LAS VEGAS (Ticker) - Last year, California did not want to play in the Holiday Bowl and it showed. The Golden Bears hope to have a much better performance this year when they face BYU in the Las Vegas Bowl at Sam Boyd Stadium. In 2004, the Bears went 10-1 in the regular season but narrowly missed out on an at-large berth to a BCS bowl. Greatly disappointed, they came out listless and were defeated by Texas Tech in the Holiday Bowl, 45-31. This season, Cal (7-4) began the season 5-0 before losing four times in a five-game span in Pac-10 Conference play. However, the Bears ended the campaign with a 27-3 road rout of arch-rival Stanford on November 19. Filling in for the ineffective Joe Ayoob, Steve Levy passed for 125 yards and a touchdown against the Cardinal, while Marshawn Lynch rushed for 123 yards and a score. Lynch ran for 1,052 yards and seven TDs during the season, while Justin Forsett gained 962 yards on the ground with six scores. BYU (6-5), which went 5-3 in Mountain West Conference play, had won five of six games before losing its regular-season finale, a 41-34 overtime setback to Utah on November 19. The Cougars rallied from a 21-point halftime deficit to force overtime, but the Utes scored on their first drive in the extra session and BYU could not match the visitors. The Cougars are paced offensively by John Beck, who passed for 3,357 yards and 24 TDs, and Curtis Brown, who ran for 1,095 yards and 14 TDs. BYU is 2-0 against Cal, posting a 38-28 win in Provo in 1999 and a 44-16 triumph in Berkeley in 2001 - the last year the Cougars were in a bowl, when they lost to Louisville in the Liberty Bowl. The Cougars are 7-1 at Sam Boyd Stadium, having gone 6-0 against UNLV and 1-1 in Western Athletic Conference championship games.
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