For now, going to keep this to two a week, but hope to bring it back to the normal tri-weekly schedule as football season starts to take shape again.

Water Polo

The Big Splash is coming up in Berkeley! The women’s water polo team takes on Furd this Sunday at 4PM at Speiker. While the evil Lobsterbacks are favored, this should be a fun one and it will be on Pac-12 Network. Here is the official Cal preview.

Baseball

Cal scored four runs in the first inning and did not look back. They would go on to score 12 runs (9 in the first 4 innings) while starter Jared Horn threw six shutout innings (Cougars would score 2 late) and it was a 12-2 Bears win. Can they do it again tonight? Find out at 6PM. No TV, so head to Evans Diamond, listen to KALX, or follow @GoldenBlogs for updates!

Home run on your birthday? That's Cameron Eden for ya. #GoBears A post shared by Cal Baseball (@calbaseball) on Mar 31, 2017 at 8:33pm PDT

Softball

Not a good day for Softball yesterday as they get hammered by Arizona 7-0. Arizona is a staggering 35-1 and #4 in the country, so this will be a tough task for the Bears as they look to pull at least one upset today (4pm) and tomorrow (12pm) at home. The entire series is on Pac-12 Network.

A foul ball by Arizona player Jessie Harper hit one of the cameras dead on, disabling it for the rest of the day (and maybe the series?) Poor Pac-12 Networks... I’m sure the viral highlight got them some good attention though!

Beach Volleyball

Tough roadtrip for the Bears. They had to play #6 Long Beach State, #3 UCLA (Both at Long Beach) and at #1 USC in succession. Unfortunately they did not get a win against any of them. They lost 5-0, 4-1, and 5-0 respectively. They did at least notch wins against Loyola Marymount and Cal State Northridge (Both at Northridge) before heading home.

Tennis

Women’s Basketball

Incoming freshmen Kianna Smith scored 4 points in 12 minutes at Wednesday’s McDonalds All American game. Her West team lost to the East team 74-80. This was the first time a Golden Bear participated in the contest since Jaylen Brown, Ivan Rabb, and Kristine Anigwe all competed in 2015 (Unlike Kianna, none had committed to the Bears at the time).

My apologies for missing this in my previous Golden Nuggets, but Rivals did an interview with her prior to her trip to Chicago. Here’s a quote below regarding her favorite thing about joining Cal.

“Playing in the best conference in the country and having to compete every game,” Smith says. “Being a part of the growing program coach Lindsay and the rest of the coaching staff built, and being able to play with everyone that's on the team now. So excited about it all.” - Kianna Smith

Men’s Basketball

Football

Trace interviewed recent Cal commit Nick Alftin for Rivals. No subscription required. Here’s an excerpt but it is worth reading the whole thing.

"Honestly Cal was my number one decision for a school to go to," Alftin said about why he committed so quickly, "education wise and athletics. I love the new coaching staff in place. I love the commits they have so far, Adrian Martinez, Omari Harris, and JH Tevis. They’re all really cool guys, they all look like athletes, and they play tough football, so I love that, and I want to put the Bears back on top." - Nick Alftin

The Mercury News has a writeup regarding Cal’s recent recruits and asks “Is [Wilcox] making inroads with Bay Area recruits?”

Athletics

Jon Wilner sat down with Roxy Bernstein and talked about the state of Cal Athletics, particularly football and men’s basketball but also the state of the Athletics program. If you don’t have time to listen to the entire 35 minute interview, Wilner typed up a few highlights.

Go Bears!

REMINDER: Check out Women’s Gymnastics in the Fayetteville Regional at 2PM. Here is our preview from Ruey.