Turtledroppings.com – Maryland Football And Basketball Blog

There are so many reasons you want to be in the tournament.  The first is there are so many more chances for your school to get some publicity, and it started today already on a national level.  I tuned into the Tirico and Van Pelt Show on ESPN Radio today, and as a guest, they had on both Williams’ from the ACC.  Of course I was more interested in Gary, but it certainly helps to be interviewed for the same reason as one of the top teams in the country.  

Gary didn’t have a whole lot to say that you wouldn’t expect.  He talked about how excited he was for Dave Neal, and how much Neal understands what getting these younger players to NCAA Tournament will do for the future.  How much he thinks Dave Neal wanted to get back having tasted it before.  He also said a lot of the more reserved players were going nuts in the locker room (not just Vasquez).  He also talked about all the stuff going on in the papers, and he knows  he is in a unique situation where the hometown paper can criticize the President, than he certainly knows he is going to get his share when things aren’t going well.  He still likes to talk about the past success of this decade and how well he has done post sanctions.  Van Pelt asked him where this season ranked and he said it was behind winning it all, and in 1994 when he took the program for the very first time.   He said that was almost as important for the school as it was the basketball program (let’s be honest, it got this “journalist” to want to go to Maryland).  True story is I made my first visit the day after they beat Georgetown, and there was quite a buzz around the campus that day.  No one knew who Joe Smith was, but we all knew who Othello Harrington was.  Joe was no longer an unknown after that, and if Maryland would except me, I would except them.  But enough about me.  They asked him about Cal, and he said he was very concerned about how well they shoot (more on that soon).  Overall, he really defended the program and was happy for the players and the school, and how some of his recruits “that aren’t good enough for Maryland” do pretty well against the top conference in the country.

Now that I have that out of the way let’s move on to California.  We all know a lot about Gary and his Terps, but we do we know about Cal.  This is going to be important for our trip out there over Labor Day weekend for the football season opener as well, so go ahead and bookmark this permalink!

University of California Berkeley has its beginnings in 1866 when the College of California was on the land of the current campus.  It was not doing well enough to be self sustaining so they merged with the state run Agricultural, Mining and Mechanical Arts College to form the University of California.  They, like most schools that popped up in the late 1800′s are part of the Land Grant program.  In 1873 the school opened on it’s current Berkeley location with 167 males and 222 females. 

In 1952 the University of California split up and each location became its own institution, with its own president and Chancellor.  If you watched the O.C. you know Sandy Cohen went to Berkeley and talks about all the anti-war protest and demonstrations.  In 1969 the People’s Park Protest eventually busted into violence as the students were ready to take over the park.  The police officers used 00 buckshot to try and calm the crowd.  Over a hundred students wound up in the hospital with the buckshot lodged in their bodies.  One eventually died from complications.  The next day was declared a state of emergency and the national guard was called in.

If you wish to attend Berkeley it will set you back $26,586 for room, board, tuition, and fees if you were a Californian.  If you were from out of state add $20,608 to that total.  Just as a side note, from perusing the website for notes, they like to compare themselves to the Ivy League Schools.

This is one school that might give Maryland a run for our money as far as famous alumni.  First of all they have 24 Nobel Laureates for various things.  Reading through the list, most of them appear much to complicated to explain.  Some examples are gene silencing, discovery of a new form of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations are a couple of examples.  Do you really need to know who figured them out?  One that I actually do know of is the use of Carbon-14 for age determination by William Libby.  So suffice it to say they have some brainiacs. 

Let’s get to some of the people who have made contributions we might know about!  Let’s not forget our own President Dr. Mote.  He graduated in 1959, also got his masters and Ph.D. from Berkeley.  Terry McMillan the author of how Stella Got Her Groove back is a grad.  Adam Duritz, the lead singer of Counting Crows attended Cal.  Stephan Jenkins was the 1987 Valedictorian, he is also the lead singer of Third Eye Blind.  Two members of AFI attended Cal, Davey Havok and Jade Puget.  Scott Adams was the creator of Dilbert.  Jann Wenner, the founder of Rolling Stone Magazine also attended.  ESPN and ABC sideline reporter Michelle Tafoya is a 1988 grad.  Mark Goodson graduated and then went into TV game shows.  Everyones favorite American Idol contestant William Hung attended Cal as well.  Jerry Mathers, better known as Beaver Cleaver is a grad.  Gregory Peck will wrap up our list of Cal alum, from the entertainment list.  Tom Anderson is the founder of Myspace, he sold it for over $500 million.  Does anyone even use Myspace anymore?  Donald Fisher was the co-founder of the Gap.  Here is one we all owe a special thanks to!  Kai Huang is the founder of video game company Red Octane, who created Guitar Hero!  Judge Lance Ito (yes the judge from the OJ Trial) is a 1975 alum.  Rob Fulop is an alum who developed Missle Command for the Atari 2600.  Almost as good as Guitar Hero!  You know I think I am going to end my list there.  The list of software engineers is a mile long in itself.

Now let’s get to the part we all care about.  What is the Cal hoops team all about.  We know they shoot well.  Actually well doesn’t describe it.  They shoot 48% from the field, 75% from the line and the killer 43% from beyond the arc.  That may decide the game right there.  They average 12 turnovers a game, so they do a fairly decent job protecting the ball.  The Bears are led by 5’10″ Jerome Randle.  He is averaging 18.4 points per game, 4.9 assist, an over 3 boards a game.  He shoots 46% from three, connecting on 80 for the season.  His range is pretty much anywhere inside of midcourt as he will launch from anywhere.  Patrick Christopher averages 14.6 points and also shoots a hefty 37% from three.  Wrapping up the double digit scorers is Theo Robertson at 12.8 per game while shooting 49% from three.  The leading rebounder is Jamal Boykin at 6.4 per game.  He chips in 9.6 points per game.  Cal is not a great rebounding team as they only have a +2.9 advantage per game.  Part of that may be the shooting percentage is so high! 

This season they lost to #9 Missouri, #16 Florida State, two losses to #17 UCLA, and a loss to #19 Arizona State against ranked opponents.  Their wins against ranked opponents include two wins vs #14 Washington. 

Here are some random facts about Cal.  They are 0-2 in neutral sites this year.  They score 75 points per game, and allow 68 points per game and 40% shooting.  So for now that is my breakdown.  I will keep researching and try to drop you a few more nuggets along the way.  GO TERPS!

Extra Droplets

Don’t forget the Women’s Bracket comes out tonight at 7:00.  Look for the Lady Terps to grab a #1 seed.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 16th, 2009 at 5:48 pm and is filed under Maryland Terps Basketball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.