Berkeley, Ca- Just too much Orange for the California Golden Bears to handle at California Memorial Stadium. Syracuse took down the Cal Bears 33-25 with a balance attack.
Cal scored 17 second half points looking for a comeback victory that fell short after a Fernando Mendoza threw a 5-yard touchdown pass to Jonathan Brady with 1:01 left in the game. On the next play an onside kick by Cal was unsuccessful.
Kyle McCord threw for 323 yards on Cal defense with a touchdown on 29/46 passes. The Orange targeted 7 different receivers with Oronde Gadsen II lead with 109yards for 8 catches. Now LeQuint Allen caught the touchdown along with 3 passes for 25-yards.
Ground game was a bright sport for coach Willcox with Jaivian Thomas scoring a touchdown on 75-yard burst in the 2nd quarter. Jaydn Ott carried most of the running load with 11 carries for 78-yards and a touchdown of his own.
“I mean, they had four 4th downs, was at the, I believe the first half. They can, every fourth down they went for they converted,” said Cal coach Justin Wilcox, “So we weren’t able to get off the field. We held them to a couple of field goal tries.”
For Syracuse the Cal defense saw a steady amount of LeQuint Allen who carried the football 23 times for 109-yards with 2 touchdowns for the game.
This victory has Syracuse in the driver seat with two games to go leading up to ACC championships. Both of these games will be at home against UCON and Miami who is ranked #11 in the country this week.
Cal has two more opportunities to reach 6 wins to be bowl eligible, with a game at home vs Stanford and finishing on the road at #13 SMU.
“We need to win games and we got to it’s our job to find ways to win games and ultimately that’s my responsibility,” said Wilcox, “And we didn’t do it today.”
