Cal wins close Emerald Bowl | Sportsfan at Windsong's Blog

California won a remarkably tight game against the Miami Hurricanes in Saturday night's Emerald Bowl, a game played just 12 miles from the Bears home stadium.

They won despite a poor performance from quarterback Nate Longshore, who seemed unable to get the offense going on any possession except for Jahvid Best, who made himself a star on national television by running for 186 yards & a TD. I am sure that longshore wished the game had been played somewhere else, because of the preponderance of boos he heard throughout the night due to his somewhat inept playing.

What saved the game for Cal was Miami quarterback Jacory Harris first doing his impression of 49er QB JT O'Sullivan by fumbling the ball away on the Miami 10, followed by some really bizarre clock management on their last possession. Nothing says cluelessness like wasting valuable time when you have less than 2 minutes & have to score a TD to tie the game. As a bay area native & life long resident, I was of course rooting for Cal, but couldn't understand what Miami was doing by taking so much time getting those last plays off. This is the fault of both the inexperienced quarterback & coach Randy Shannon, who should have called a timeout to explain the neccessity of getting downfield quickly.

While Miami looks like it may be an improved team next year, Cal needs to find a quarterback as the musical chairs this year is responsible for this team not winning more games & challenging for the Pac 10 title. Coach Tedford was clearly annoyed at some of Longshore's plays Saturday, but not enough to replace him with Kevin Riley. Next year should be interesting.

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December 28, 2008 11:30 AM ET

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Miami made a lot of mistakes in the last 3 minutes of the game and could have had a far better chance if they had hurries up but oh well. In addition i could have counted the miami fans on one hand and that didn't help!