Cal Keeps Losing Close Games

Saturday's 14-10 loss to Auburn leaves the Bears with a 3-13 record in one-score games since the start of 2020

The Cal football slogan: Close, but no cigar.

The Bears suffered another frustrating loss on Saturday night, losing to Auburn at home 14-10 despite opportunity after opportunity to win the game.

This is typical of the Bears.

Since the start of the 2020 season Cal is 3-13 in games decided by one score (seven points or fewer). 

Put another way: Cal has lost 19 games since the start of the 2020 season and 13 of those defeats have been by a margin of seven points or fewer.

If the Bears had gone just 8-8 in those close games, we would have a different feeling about Justin Wilcox's Cal football program.

Good teams win close games.  In that same four-year period from 2020 to 2023, Oregon is 10-5 in one-score games if you include the eight-point win on Saturday against Texas Tech when the Ducks scored the final touchdown on a pick-six with 35 seconds left.

Cal's loss to Auburn was particularly frustrating.

"I think we're all sick right now," Cal safety Craig Woodson, "when we let a game like that slip away from us when we know we should have beat that team easily."

Cal had seven more first downs than Auburn (19-12), the Bears had more yards of total offense (273-230), and Cal had the ball nearly 10 minutes more than the Tigers (34:48-25:12). Plus Auburn committed four turnovers.

Yet Cal lost.

Three times Cal started drives at the Auburn 35-yard line or closer, and the Bears scored a combined three points on those possessions.

Trailing by four points, Cal had a first down at the Auburn 15-yard line with a little more than two minutes left in the game and failed to score.

Cal kicker Michael Luckhurst was 1-for-4 on field-goal attempts, all from inside 45 yards, and he made a 51-yard field goal at the end of the first half that was nullified by a Cal holding penalty. That's 12 points that went missing in action.

Luckhurst is 2-for-7 for the season. 

Will Luckhurst remain Cal's place-kicker?

"I think Michael is a talented young man," Wilcox said. "Obviously we're not doin a great job on PAT/field goals. We'll see where that goes."

Even the football gods seem to be against the Bears.

Early in the game, Jackson Sirmon returned a fumble for what should have been ruled a touchdown.  But because the officials had blown the play dead, not realizing a fumble had occurred, the Bears had to start at the spot of Sirmon's fumble recovery, at the Auburn 35-yard line. Cal managed only a field goal out of that possession.

There is a recurring theme that Cal is close to turning the corner, if only it could start winning those winnable games on a regular basis.  You keep thinking Cal will start to learn how to win those tight games, changing the team's fortunes. It hasn't happened yet.

A lot of bad things have to happen at bad times for a team to go 3-13 in one-score games over three-plus seasons.

Cover photo by Neville E. Guard, USA TODAY Sports

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