Pete Fiutak
Saturday was a very educational experience for two teams who entered 2006 with hopes of knocking off USC in the Pac-10. California learned from an early-season debacle in Tennessee; Arizona State learned how much Dirk Koetter mucked up his quarterback situation back in August. In a game that was going to have a profound effect on the trajectory of their seasons, the Golden Bears and Sun Devils took sharply opposite terms. Jeff Tedford's Cal team decided to right the ship, while Koetter's Sun Devils took an embarrassing nosedive that doesn't bode well for the rest of the year.
The drama of this affair was short-lived, the substance of the matter easy to identify. After allowing a first-drive touchdown to the Devils, Cal — desperate to avoid the slumped shoulders and bad body language that cost the Bears three weeks before in Knoxville — awakened and drastically ratcheted up its level of intensity on both sides of the ball. In roughly 20 minutes of clock time, the Berkeley boys — with up-front power and playmaking speed on the edges — rolled up 35 points to gain a commanding advantage. And when ASU quarterback Rudy Carpenter — given a horrible play call by Koetter — threw a pick-six to Cal's Daymeion Hughes just before halftime, the issue was resolved with force and finality.
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