Basketball: Bears play way into Lunardi’s field

Posted on January 16, 2014 by Jeff Faraudo

Five straight victories — three of them on the road to open the Pac-12 schedule — have elevated Cal into ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi’s latest NCAA tournament field.

Lunardi projects the Bears as a No. 10 seed and has them playing No. 7 Michigan in St. Louis.

Update: RealtimeRPI.com has boosted Cal to No. 29 in its latest rankings.

Cal is one of six Pac-12 schools Lunardi now envisions in the field, including Stanford, whom he projects playing in the play-in game against Minnesota for a No. 12 seed.

Others he sees in the bracket are Arizona at No. 1, Oregon at No. 6, Colorado at No. 6, UCLA at No. 8. Arizona State is listed as one of the first four out.

Jeff Faraudo

Mitch

Be interesting to watch how Colorado fares without Spencer Dinwiddie. Huge loss.
Eric

As usual, Lunardi is late to the party.
NewYearsEveFriends

Go Bears.
This is a team worth supporting!
NewYearsEveFriends

This teams reminds me of the old core of Braun’s (is it okay to mention his name by now — have we forgotten how much he screwed us?) teams with Hughes & Hughes, Legans, Wethers, Forehan-Kelly, Gates, Shipp, Midgley. These guys work hard, are off the radar (almost everyone at BI predicted they would lose to the Furd at Maples), and they genuinely like each other.

This team could do some great stuff.
Eric

Now we see – UCLA beats the Buffs at Boulder. Sad for Colorado – definitely had a strong team this year, but gives us an advantage.
Dan

It’s great to be in Lunardi’s field, it means that the Bears have played themselves into a decent position. But it is irrelevant now, and Lunardi make makes so many mistakes it’s mind boggling- and I have followed this for the last few years because of the Aztecs. He a typically East Coast Biased, ESPN wonk