Cal Basketball Schedule Released

After waiting for weeks (seriously guys, I’ve been waiting for weeks), the Cal Men’s Basketball Schedule has finally been unveiled on the Calbears.com. The point is, the schedule is now here and the people obsessed with forecasting what’s going to happen before it happens are finally appeased. I’m one of those people!

Since the Pac-12 schedule is fairly easy to forecast, I’ll just provide the non-conference opponents. The whole schedule can be found here. The teams the Bears will be facing out of Pac-12 play this year are: UC San Diego, UC Irvine, George Washington, Austin Peay, CBE Classic (Georgia in the first round, Missouri or Notre Dame next round), Denver, Mcneese State, at San Diego State, San Jose State, Jackson State, Weber State, UC Santa Barbara, and at UNLV.

Georgia, Missouri/ND, at UNLV, and at San Diego State are the toughest opponents on the schedule. UC Santa Barbara is the toughest of the rest of the opponents, with big time scorer Orlando Johnson on roster and a veteran team coming off an NCAA Tournament berth. Austin Peay and Weber State aren’t chopped liver, and George Washington plays in a decent conference, but other than that the teams the Golden Bears are playing are the teams you’d usually see on a SEC football team’s schedule.

This Cal team could go undefeated in the non-conference part of the schedule. I’m not saying they will, not predicting they will, all I’m saying is that it’s possible. I see 4-5 teams capable of beating Cal, but all of them are losing some major talent or having some kind of offseason problem (coaching change, in Missouri’s case). Again, I’m not saying that this team is going to go undefeated in this portion of the schedule, but it is plausible. 1 or 2 losses is more of a realistic projection, but this squad has a lot in favor of getting out of the gates hot, something they didn’t do last year.

Maybe if you’re a season ticket holder accustomed to seeing premier games like Kansas and San Diego State at home you’re disappointed. Other than that, there shouldn’t be too many frowning faces about this news. Maybe it’s not news that’ll make you all warm and fuzzy inside, but it’s hard to get worked up about a schedule. What they do with that schedule, go ahead and get mad if bad things happen. Hopefully the Bears can rack up wins with their schedule. Go Bears!