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When Leon Powe entered the NBA draft, I, like most Cal fans, resigned myself to a mediocre basketball season for the Cal men. Over the last three (late) nights, I watched Cal win a tournament in Alaska to go to 5 & 1 on their season. Now I realize that this is a young, inexperienced group of players (and fairly small sized, not very deep), but … it sure was exciting to see a group of Cal players go 42 of 44 from the charity stripe, make something like 60% of their three point attempts, and have seven players consistently scoring, five of whom could easily be in double digits. That’s something I haven’t seen since Joe Shipp and Brian Whethers were playing together.

And for once it seems like there aren’t a bunch of head-cases on the team (i.e., Amit Tamir, Rod Bensen, Dominic McGuire, Marquise Kately, etc.) It seems to me that Ubaka and Hardin were head-cases, but are now becoming solid–though Hardin is still kind of wild at times. And Omar Wilkes and Ryan Anderson seem ridiculously consistent and poised.  Jerome Randle:  mistake-prone and still a little wild, but capable of amazing things–and not afraid to take the big shot. Theo Robertson:  amazingly solid rebounding, passing and defense (but he can’t really score yet). Alex Pribble: great defensive spark and surprisingly good jump shot at times. Eric Verneisel … verdict’s still out–I’m told he can be a good defender, but it seems like he simply goes in and commits a few fouls, once in a while gets a bucket.

Whether this team ends up with a good enough record to get into the tourney, well that’s a tough question. The early part of their scheduled hasn’t really tested them much. But the personnel are interesting and are shooting lights out at times. So I think, contrary to expectations, this could be a fun year!