[81alum]

Could one of the admins update the FAQ and discuss the woofing gods?  Can we make that required reading?  Maybe a pinned post "Rules for fans and boosters regarding woofing."

Rivalry games are well known to not be governed by who should win.
Especially in this time of COVID, all kinds of issues can happen to any players and any team.

Any team with 17 on the roster could have to play a game without their best 9 players being available.  Those last 8 might be decent players, but how much have they played as a team, in the spotlight, without some experienced player to keep them from melting down?   Just imagine 40 minutes of garbage time.... or WORSE, 80 minutes. (Whew.... Whether we played with our 8 shortest or 8 tallest players, there'd be a 6'1" player, but we could be forced to play as an all-guard team.)

How many times have I seen a good Stanford team get ahead, have the refs start calling mercy fouls against Stanford, and then have Stanford collapse or nearly collapse?

These are rivalry games.  Anything can happen.  Why, we could win by 9 in the first game, and then, days later, lose by 12 in the second.  Nightmares happen.

I am NOT a fan of playing the same team twice in the same week.

I agree MT, and I outlined how it could happen.  Is it likely?  No.  But neither was it likely when Alexis Gray-Lawson beat us almost single handedly, and in their star freshman Jayda Curry they have someone who is capably of "going off" like that.  So Cal has beaten us before when we were heavily favored, and as you said, we have split games days apart for no apparent reason.

I also do not like playing games so close to each other.  It does make it far, far easier for Tara's style of defense to be perfected, though, since there is only one scouting report to master and it can be adjusted between games 1 and 2 without reinventing the wheel.

But yes, probably the biggest threat is that we lose a bunch of players to illness.  That can shake up the best laid plans.  But that has been true all year.

[81alum]

Could one of the admins update the FAQ and discuss the woofing gods?  Can we make that required reading?  Maybe a pinned post "Rules for fans and boosters regarding woofing."

Rivalry games are well known to not be governed by who should win.
Especially in this time of COVID, all kinds of issues can happen to any players and any team.

Any team with 17 on the roster could have to play a game without their best 9 players being available.  Those last 8 might be decent players, but how much have they played as a team, in the spotlight, without some experienced player to keep them from melting down?   Just imagine 40 minutes of garbage time.... or WORSE, 80 minutes. (Whew.... Whether we played with our 8 shortest or 8 tallest players, there'd be a 6'1" player, but we could be forced to play as an all-guard team.)

How many times have I seen a good Stanford team get ahead, have the refs start calling mercy fouls against Stanford, and then have Stanford collapse or nearly collapse?

These are rivalry games.  Anything can happen.  Why, we could win by 9 in the first game, and then, days later, lose by 12 in the second.  Nightmares happen.

I am NOT a fan of playing the same team twice in the same week.

I agree MT, and I outlined how it could happen.  Is it likely?  No.  But neither was it likely when Alexis Gray-Lawson beat us almost single handedly, and in their star freshman Jayda Curry they have someone who is capably of "going off" like that.  So Cal has beaten us before when we were heavily favored, and as you said, we have split games days apart for no apparent reason.

I also do not like playing games so close to each other.  It does make it far, far easier for Tara's style of defense to be perfected, though, since there is only one scouting report to master and it can be adjusted between games 1 and 2 without reinventing the wheel.

But yes, probably the biggest threat is that we lose a bunch of players to illness.  That can shake up the best laid plans.  But that has been true all year.