BearTalk

Musings after the first weekend of the Pac-10 season:

– Walking down the stairway toward the press room at Haas Pavilion after Cal’s win over Arizona on Friday night, I heard one fan remark, “Wow, that was a surprise.” Wait a minute, that was every Cal fan saying that.

– Not sure which was the bigger stunner – Cal sweeping the Arizona schools or Oregon State beating anyone, much less USC. Congrats to Craig Robinson, who already has a leg-up on his brother-in-law, President-elect Obama, in their respective rebuilding jobs.

– They’re happy in Seattle, too, after UW’s Huskies beat WSU’s Cougs for the first time after seven straight defeats.

– Say what you want about everyone else, UCLA is the only team in the Pac-10 to come out of the first weekend with two road wins. Cal will find out how tough that is this weekend in Washington.

– Still, it’s clear that while no road win will come easily, the Northwest is the place to try to steal a few this season.

– I want to see a free-throwing shooting contest between UCLA’s Darren Collison and Cal’s Jerome Randle. Collison is 41-for-42 for the season and has made a school-record 40 in a row. Randle is at 87.4 percent for the season — not even best on his team — but he’s made 19 of his past 20 and seems to never miss in the final 5 minutes of a game.

– Oregon State sophomore Calvin Haynes will be everyone’s go-to quote guy if he continues to pop off as he did after the Beavers’ overtime win vs. USC:  “All this win is going to do is build on the next one, and the next one, and the next one. We’re no longer the team we were last year. We can play with anybody, and today was the day that we actually showed the world we can execute down the stretch of a big game and get it done.”

– Figured you needed a moment to catch your breath. Haynes didn’t. Here’s more:  “It’s going to be like this for the rest of the season. All we’re going to do is get better and better. I hope teams don’t sleep on us, because if they do this is going to happen every single time.”

– Oh yeah, ASU sophomore guard James Harden is good. Real good. NBAdraft.net has him going No. 2 next spring. Now that he can shoot it from the 3-point arc, there’s almost no way to guard him. Still, I’d try to make the left-hander go right a bit more often.

– Stanford got out of the weekend with a split, which is as good as it gets after a 30-point home loss. But if senior Anthony Goods doesn’t snap out of his 5-for-25 shooting for the two games, more tough days will be ahead for the Cardinal.

– When you see that the RPI has UCLA at just No. 50, you’re reminded not to take computer rankings too seriously this early in the season.