Bruin Bites: California Game Day Edition

Well ladies and gentlemen - let's get started with our game day. Bruins finish off their little two game Pac-12 road swing with a trip to Strawberry Canyon tonight. It's a huge game for both programs. On one hand the embattled Cal Bears and their head coach are looking to save their season by doing what they have been doing for more than a decade - taking care of the Bruins on their home turf. On the other hand, Coach Jim Mora and our Bruins are going to try to end a 14 year winless streak at Strawberry Canyon, where a win is going to provide a huge boost of additional momentum in first half of 2012 season.

While the Bruins haven't won in Berkeley for 14 years, we lead the series 50-31 (which gives you an idea of how one-sided this matchup has been notwithstanding Bruins suffering through our worst decade under Dan "Chianti" Guerrero"). We have been talking about the game all week and you can catch up on all discussion in our California hub here. But, to get you started with our game day let's do a quick read through some of the items from various traditional news media outlets today:

• Chris Foster in the LA Times has a profile on the new sack happy Bruin defense, led by Anthony Barr, Dantone Jones and co. But as Bruin DC Spanos notes, "the sacks, the pressures, the hurry-ups happen because everyone is doing their part." Let's hope the Bruins get going early instead of having to worry about doing any half time adjustments.
• Speaking of the defense, ICYMI earlier in the week Earl Bloom profiled Bruin safety Stan McKay in the OC Register. The former star from Long Beach Poly has been playing somewhat of a hybrid role in Spanos defense, coming in as a linebacker in long second and third down situations. McKay has made his presence felt with couple of interceptions in our last two games.
• Over at the Pac-12 site, Sam Silverstein posted a video profile of our Jet Ski. It's something we already know - he wants to be the Mayor of LA someday. He'd certainly have everyone's vote from the Bruin Nation.
• The Mayor, Brett Hundley, Cassius Marsh and Anthony Barr teamed up to do a little video preview of tonight's game on the official site (it'd be nice if the Morgan Center stopped being so backward about videos and loading it on platform that doesn't allow embedding of these videos0.
• Lastly, in the San Francisco Chronicle John Crumpacker has a nostalgic look at the former San Francisco 49ers defensive assistant Jim Mora, described to be "thriving" in his first season at UCLA, getting to coach sons of couple of legendary 49ers (Tevin McDonald and Jerry Rice Jr.). Still wish Bruins had taken a flyer on Nick Montana (oh well).

It's a little bit of crazy time in the Bay Area this week. Both of our awesome baseball teams are in the playoffs. We got the Niners game tomorrow. There is a Blue Grass festival going on over at the Golden Park. There is the America's Cup. It's also culmination of Fleet Week (with the Blue Angels flying all over the City this week). Oh, and then we got the game featuring our Bruins by the Bay. Crazy ... but hopefully it will turn out to be fun for those of us in Bruin Blue.

Pre-game thread coming up later this morning, following by our game thread. Let's break this streak.

GO BRUINS.