Week 14: California at Stanford

Twenty-five years have passed since “The Play” took place, when the Golden Bears turned sure defeat into a miracle victory with a determined kickoff return for a touchdown, wowing everyone with a series of perfectly timed rugby passes, wading through Stanford band members prematurely wandering onto the field and forever becoming part of college football folklore.

Entering the 110th rendition of the Big Game, Cal would feel more like celebrating its past good fortune if not for two months of current misery that won’t stop. Jeff Tedford’s team has bottomed after winning its first five games, which included victories over highly formidable Tennessee and Oregon, and being elevated to No. 2 in the national polls. It has inexplicably dealt with loss after loss after putting together one of its more talented rosters.

Save for an unimpressive 20-17 decision over lowly Washington State, the Golden Bears have dropped five of their past six games, none more disturbing than a 37-23 setback at Washington two weeks ago.

Tedford was so bothered by that outcome he could be heard forcefully voicing his contempt and displeasure to his players in the locker room afterward in Seattle, challenging them to do something about it, intimating to them that they had quit on him and he needed to see better.

“He’s definitely frustrated like everyone else,” Cal senior safety Thomas DeCoud of his coach. “We need to figure something out.”

“We have to clean it,” senior wide receiver Robert Jordan said.

They could use another Play or two against Stanford.

The thing is, they don’t need to stoop to such desperate means. There are more than enough weapons to get the job done in a conventional manner.

Unlike his team, Golden Bears senior tailback Justin Forsett is finishing up his career in a productive manner this season, ranking second in the Pac-10 in rushing with 1,310 yards on 263 carries for a league-best 13 touchdowns. He needs just 16 more yards to reach 3,000 in his career.

Junior quarterback Nate Longshore, whose midseason ankle injury seemed to mirror his team’s midseason fall, appears healthy again. He’s completed 203 of 329 passes for 2,292 yards and 15 touchdowns.

No one has a better receiving corps than Longshore. He gets to pick between senior Lavelle Hawkins, who has 62 catches for 792 yards and five scores; junior DeSean Jackson, who has 60 receptions for 681 yards and five TDs, and Jordan, who has 37 catches for 442 yards and one score.

Where Cal has really come apart is defensively, suffering a total meltdown at Washington, serving up 334 yards rushing, 224 to tailback Louis Rankin, even with the Huskies forced to use a back-up quarterback, Carl Bonnell, who did little more than hand off the ball.

The Golden Bears have not been nearly as stout up front since losing junior defensive end Rulon Davis for four games with a foot injury, getting him back for one game and then losing him again to a knee injury.

As the losses and yards have mounted, the Cal confidence has dissipated to unimaginable levels.

“Earlier in the season, we were exploding on people,” Hawkins said. “We weren’t just trying to play it close; we were trying to blow people out of the water.”

In this battle of the Bay Area, the Golden Bears face a Stanford team rebuilding under first-year coach Jim Harbaugh and reaching a high-water mark with a 24-23 upset of USC. While the Cardinal have improved their win total from one to three, they’ve bogged down considerably over the past month, losing four games in a row, which included getting swept by the beatable Washington schools.

Stanford, which leads the Big Game series 54-44-1, played as poorly as it has all season in last weekend’s 21-14 loss to a struggling Notre Dame team.

While the Cardinal finally had a veteran running back available, welcoming back Anthony Kimble from a shoulder injury against the Fighting Irish, they now have quarterback uncertainty. The top two guys had to leave against Notre Dame. Sophomore Tavita Pritchard went out after taking a helmet-to-helmet shot and later complained of a headache. However, he re-entered the game briefly, replacing senior T.C. Ostrander, who suffered an elbow injury but later returned.

Harbaugh was unsure which one he would start against Cal. Ostrander, who has completed 114 of 206 passes for 1,271 yards and six touchdowns, has played in two Big Games. Pritchard, who has hit on 92 of 185 attempts for 1,069 yards and four scores, has started the Cardinal’s past seven games.

“We’ll go with whoever gives us the best chance to win the game,” Harbaugh said.

Unfortunately for him, the Golden Bears, still bowl eligible while his team is not, has the best chance to win this game.

California by 7