Cal regroups after another blowout loss

Oct 4, 2009 - 7:18 PM By JOSH DUBOW AP Sports Writer

BERKELEY, Calif.(AP) -- In two short weeks, the talk around the California football team has shifted from Rose Bowls, the Heisman Trophy and the Bowl Championship Series to finding a way to score a single touchdown.

The Golden Bears got blown out for the second straight week Saturday night, losing 30-3 to Southern California. That follows a 42-3 loss at Oregon and has sent the Golden Bears (3-2, 0-2 Pac-10) tumbling from No. 6 to out of the AP poll heading into a bye week.

"We know and we believe that we're a much better team than we've been showing," linebacker Mike Mohamed said. "For some reason we haven't been producing out there. This bye week is big for us to work on things and keep our heads high and get the old Cal back."

Cal entered the season with high hopes, with a leading Heisman Trophy candidate in Jahvid Best, a returning starter at quarterback in Kevin Riley, a handful of other playmakers on offense and a speedy, aggressive defense.

This was supposed to be the year Cal finally got back to the Rose Bowl, ending a 51-year drought. Three straight wins against overmatched opponents to open the season only fed that enthusiasm. But after failing to score a touchdown the last two weeks, players are trying to figure out what went wrong.

"We have athletes all over the field," Riley said. "That's the hardest part, how we're not getting the ball in the end zone with everyone we have."

Cal opened the season by scoring at least 50 points in back-to-back games for the first time since 1973 with blowout wins against Maryland and Eastern Washington. The Bears have now gone two games without a touchdown for the first time since late in the 1986 season.

Riley has played a big part in the offense's struggles. He completed 15 of 40 passes for 199 yards and his first interception of the year against the Trojans, and has thrown only one TD pass since having a career-high four in the opener against Maryland. He's completing 38 percent of his passes the last two weeks.

After being juggled in and out of the lineup last year by coach Jeff Tedford, Riley's starting job is secure for now. But his performance must improve if Cal is going to get back to its high-scoring ways

"We didn't execute very well in the passing game," Tedford said. "We had a chance to make plays in the passing game and didn't do a good job of it. We can't be one-dimensional. We're going to have to be able to throw the football to be successful."

Cal was able to move the ball at times on Saturday, getting inside the USC 40 five times without scoring a touchdown. There were missed blocks, bad reads and some other miscues to blame for the failure.

The biggest miscue came on the opening drive, when Riley threw an interception in the end zone to spoil a fast start by the Bears.

"We got down inside the 30 I don't know how many times and just didn't do anything with it," Riley said. "Some of it is on me and some of it is on the offense as a whole. It has to get better. ... I have all the confidence in the world. I just have to do it."

The struggles in the passing game have made life difficult for Best, who has 30 carries for 102 yards the past two games against defenses keying on the run. He ran for 412 yards and scored nine touchdowns the first three weeks, moving near the top of most pundits' Heisman lists.

Cal even got the ball to Best on direct snaps on five occasions, hoping to break a big play, but the Trojans bottled him up the same way Oregon did the previous week.

Cal has a bye before traveling to UCLA on Oct. 17.

The Bears want to avoid a repeat of 2007, when a season that began with optimism spiraled out of control. Cal lost six of its final seven after a 5-0 start, going from having a chance to be No. 1 to struggling to get into the Armed Forces Bowl.

"We're still 3-2 and there's a lot of football to be played," Tedford said. "There is no way in the world that we are folding our tent. I don't believe that about this team. We'll have a great bye week, we'll get healthy and we'll bounce back."