SF Chronicle: Ball was slick, but halftime talk will stick with Best and Vereen

By Ray Ratto

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Under normal circumstances, maybe California running back Jahvid Best would have celebrated his two first-half fumbles Saturday by not playing in the second half. Coach Jeff Tedford has played the heavy on this topic before with Marshawn Lynch and J.J. Arrington, and he was leaning that way again.  But he didn't. Cal needed to beat Oregon to maintain momentum for Saturday's game at USC, not to mention keeping its bigger dreams alive, so Best missed only a quarter and change before returning to help cement the Golden Bears' 26-16 win at Lake Memorial.

Of course, he and running mate Shane Vereen did have to endure a brief halftime chat from running back coach Ron Gould, which is apparently the emotional equivalent of a game benching. It is not hard to imagine Gould biting the head off a whippet to drive home a point, so one can take Vereen at his word when he said, "On a scale of 1 to 10, if 10 was 'very motivational,' he was about a 23."  Best graded it "about an 11. He chewed us out, but we needed it."  Indeed, Best and Vereen were responsible for three of Cal's four fumbles in a ridiculously persistent rainstorm in Berkeley, and the only reason Best was benched rather than Vereen was because he got to two fumbles before Vereen got to one.

"I told him, 'If you're not going to hold on to the ball, just stay in the room,' " Gould said of his chat with Best. "I was waiting to see how he was going to respond. I could tell if he was listening to what I was saying. You look in a man's eyes. Is it empty there? It wasn't. He was absorbing it all, and he came back in the second half and he held onto the ball. He was better."

He was equally pointed with Vereen, but as Tedford said afterward, Vereen wasn't going to be able to carry the load alone in the final three quarters, which is probably why Best's exile lasted only 18 minutes rather than a game (Lynch) or practically an entire season (Arrington). Vereen had 10 carries during Best's interlude, and given Cal's intention not to put the ball up any more than necessary in the second half, Best needed to assure Gould with first his eyes, then his responses, then his ball security.

"I don't want to make excuses," he said, "but the brace (on his left elbow from the injury sustained against Colorado State) might make it a little more difficult. But that's not a good reason. I have to focus more. That's what they told me."  And the idea that he might have had to learn his lesson by watching the rest of the game?  "The thought crossed my mind," he said, "but I knew if I got another chance, I would focus better and finish my runs."

He did, and so did Vereen, much to Tedford's relief. While much of the attention from week to week is directed toward the popular parlor game "Name That Quarterback," the truth is that this team lives with its running game no matter whether the quarterback is the freshly concussed Kevin Riley or the mega-persistent Nate Longshore. They finished with 154 yards on 37 carries between them, and Vereen's two-yard plow with 8:57 left essentially wrapped up a game Cal must feel fortunate to have won.

That the conditions prevented them from establishing the run to their satisfaction Saturday is irrelevant to Tedford and certainly to Gould. Indeed, many of the conclusions from this game are colored by the rain, the turnovers, and the troublesome turf that will most surely have to be replaced before next season. Not only did the field not drain as the rain poured until six minutes remained in the game, but there are sections where the turf is detaching from the glue that is supposed to hold it down, a detail Tedford is sure to mention to athletic director Sandy Barbour at some as-yet-to-be-determined breakfast meeting.

The more immediate task, though, is USC on Saturday. It is the highest hurdle left for the Golden Bears, followed soon thereafter by always nettlesome Oregon State, but no Cal player or coach is looking ahead to the Beavers. At least nobody in his right mind. "This game is already in the back seat," Best said. "As soon as it ended, we were already thinking about SC." But before that comes today's film session with Gould, in which the matter of those three fumbles will come up again, and again, and again. "After that, we'll be on to preparing for SC," Best said. "He'll probably mention it again Tuesday at practice," Vereen rebutted. "But after that, it'll be over and done with."

Until the next one, of course. Ron Gould is not reluctant to do spur-of-the-moment grillwork upon those in his charge, a fact both Jahvid Best and Shane Vereen rediscovered Saturday to their mutual chagrin. Now if they can only agree on the difference between an 11 and a 23.