Bay Area Sports Blog

California rolled to a 90-74 win over Oregon in the quarterfinals of the Pac-10 tournament behind 22 points from Pac-10 POY Jerome Randle.

The opening game of the evening session between Stanford and Arizona State was nearly as lopsided, but not in the way most would have predicted.  The Cardinal’s 70-61 win wasn’t exactly a “monumental upset” as color man Marques Johnson referred to it in the second half, but with Arizona State in serious need of a win–or two–in Los Angeles to improve its NCAA tournament standing, few could have seen this coming.

Johnson was his usual entertaining self, like in the video above, where he puts an Allen Iversonesque spin on the Stanford Tree.

The Tree, for now, is Jonathan “Shu Fry” Strange. Come spring quarter, Strange will be replaced by Ben “Bollox” Cortes, who sprouted earlier this month after a spirited campaign that included turning himself into a human pinata.

Cal plays UCLA tomorrow. Stanford will play the winner of the Oregon State-Washington game. If Cal and Stanford play the same way they did today, we could be looking at a Bay Area showdown in the title game.

Tiger Woods’ Stanford girlfriend has decided to come out and defend him, writing an article for Golf.com about her time with Woods. Irene Folstrom is an attorney advocating for Native American rights in Minnesota, where she’s from. She definitely went to Stanford, and Cardinal grads are honest folks, so we believe her that she dated Tiger.

Some of the choice selections in Folstrom’s piece:

This may surprise some people, but Tiger was a great boyfriend.

At that age Tiger had an amazing metabolism so we spent a lot of time eating. Our favorite restaurant was a Chinese joint in Mountain View; the guys there must have been golf fans because they always gave us free desserts, which was a big deal to us.

Earl and I talked a lot about politics and national affairs, and Earl often made me laugh so hard, my stomach muscles cramped. He loved to tease Tiger and me about our puppy love.

During our Southern California road trips Tiger and I spent a lot of time at the beach. We would steal a bottle of whiskey from Earl or I’d use my fake ID to buy a jug of wine, and we’d hang out and dream about the future. Tiger was very driven to be a great golfer, but he also talked a lot about wanting to make a larger contribution to society.
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…delivering Pac-10 titles to schools who have waited for, like, ever to win one. He did it at Stanford and did it even faster at Cal, as the Golden Bears cut down the nets earlier today after clinching at least a share of the crown. The fans packed the stadium, the confetti fell, Jerome Randle smiled, Montgomery was hoarse, it was awesome.

Just how good is Montgomery at what he does? Follow the lines of this basketball to see. He won a Pac-10 title at Stanford for the Cardinal’s first in 36 years, and this year’s title for Cal is its first in 50 years. Washington State (69 years) just prepared a generous offe…no they didn’t.

It’s Tree Week on the Farm, that time of year when the most ambitious Stanford students perform crazy stunts to demonstrate their desire to be the next Tree. Current Tree Jonathan Strange built a giant, metal hamster ball and rolled inside it to prove his worth last year. Pretty rad.

This year’s six candidates include tree-climbing Kirk “Big Dickosaurus” Erickson and fellow LSJUMB member Robbie Zimbroff, whose hilarious quest for Treedom is rooted in patriotic ideals. Or something.

In a year in which the Saplings’ stunts have been rather tame, Zimbroff has emerged as one of the favorites, thanks to an endorsement by Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck. (That’s Zimbroff in the pioneer getup in the above photo.)

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One by one, the faxes rolled into the Stanford football office this morning, National Letters of Intent from high school football players across the country on what amounts to Christmas for college football coaches — National Signing Day.

One by one, Cardinal head coach Jim Harbaugh, tweeted in delight about his presents.

I see you, 404! (DE Henry Anderson)

I see you, 917! (S Ed Reynolds)

I see you, 317! (LB Blake Lueders)

I see you, 612! (LB A.J. Tarpley)

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Stanford men’s basketball coach Johnny Dawkins announced the addition of a familiar face to his injury-riddled roster today. Cardinal quarterback Tavita Pritchard, who filled in for the injured Andrew Luck in the Sun Bowl and more famously orchestrated the Biggest.Upset.Ever, will join the team on this week’s trip to Arizona and Arizona State. The news was first Tweeted by Stanford grad Scott Reiss.

A four-year basketball letterwinner in high school, Pritchard follows in the footsteps of two of his former Cardinal football teammates who moonlighted on the Maples Pavilion court during their time on the Farm — Evan Moore and Mark Bradford. It was Bradford who was on the receiving end of Pritchard’s last-minute TD pass to shock USC at the Coliseum in 2007. Stanford’s trip to the Galen Center on Feb. 6 should be fun.

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Stanford’s Landry Fields was named the Pac-10 Player of the Week after averaging 24.5 points and 8.5 rebounds in a sweep of the Oregon schools last weekend, moving the Cardinal back above .500 and into a five-way tie for second place in the punchless Pac-10. Rad. The honor, Fields’ first, seems like the perfect excuse to post this video of the Cardinal forward dunking in front of, and then over, Golden State Warrior Adonal Foyle in a city league game last year.

It’s a wonder Foyle’s reps didn’t confiscate this footage.

In two unrelated and not entirely shocking news items this morning, Toby Gerhart officially announced he’s entering the NFL Draft, and the 49ers officially announced they’ll play a game in London next season. There were two “officially”s in that sentence because both news items were widely expected to happen at some point, they just happened to happen at around the same time.

Gerhart is an interesting case for the draft. He says he’s quitting school to focus on the combine and the draft, and he may need to focus on getting his 40-yard-dash time down. CBS and NFLDraftScouts.com say Gerhart “does not own a breakaway gear” but he is a “hard-working athlete who takes a pounding but keeps on coming.” He is predicted as a third-rounder there and a second-rounder at NFLDraftBible.com.

The 49ers don’t need a running back but maybe they could draft Gerhart as a fullback. That will sell tickets. But of course the 49ers won’t need to sell tickets because one of their home games is in London.

You would’ve thought that big contract extension Jim Harbaugh signed with Stanford in December would’ve ended all the speculation about his candidacy for other jobs. Well, not so much. Today Pro Football Talk identified Harbaugh as a “stealth” candidate for the Buffalo Bills coaching job and the potential opening with the Oakland Raiders.

So that means it’s time to update our map of jobs Harbaugh has been tied to since he started coaching. We thought this thing was put to bed for awhile. Guess not. Make sure to zoom in on the Bay Area and San Diego!

View Jim Harbaugh does America in a larger map

Listen to any drive-time sports talk radio show in any part of the country and you’re likely to get a snapshot of a disgruntled fanbase. Indianapolis fans are upset the Colts pulled their starters Sunday. Cleveland fans are worried they might lose their Witness LeBron James. And so on.

But we here in the Bay Area have collected a lot of snapshots over the last seven years. KNBR is a veritable tomb for fan emotions, a bonfire for fans to throw their embarrassing snapshots onto. Chris Cohan needs to sell the Warriors (and of course there’s a web site for that). Brian Sabean is allergic to bats and needs to be fired (and that). The 49ers have botched the hunt for a new stadium (and that). Al Davis’ iron grip is ruining the once proud Raiders (yep, that too).

Even the bright spots come with qualifiers. Billy Beane was once a revolutionary but now his method and his movie are on tenuous ground. The Sharks have plateaued as one of the most consistently successful franchises in all of pro sports, but are now famous for postseason flameouts.

It seems like it’s the worst era to be a Bay Area sports fan … ever. And with the decade’s end approaching, we decided to definitively prove or disprove all those radio callers. We wanted to put the debate to rest.

The theorem: It’s the worst time ever to be a Bay Area sports fan.

The short answer: Yes.

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