Monday Notebook: Oregon Week, Hicks' Community Efforts

Much like a year ago, Cal comes into a matchup against Oregon on a losing streak. Last year saw the Bears beat Oregon in what would be their final contest of 2020. For Justin Wilcox and a Cal team coming off a bye, the past is the past, and they've been focused on individual development over the past week.

"What we're focused on is the individual improvements needed with each coach, player and position group for us to play better," Wilcox said,"Last year was last year, and we're focused on playing better as a team. I don't think our guys are lacking confidence, we just haven't finished games. Our job is to show the players how we can do it better, how they can do it better individually, and how we can do it better as a team so we can come out on top."

There are similar circumstances from last year and this year. Oregon is also coming off a late loss, this time off an overtime loss to Stanford, but prior to that contest, Oregon had been at their best in forcing turnovers under former Cal defensive coordinator Tim DeRuyter.

"They've done a great job creating turnovers and they've also protected the ball pretty well," Wilcox said, "it's one of the better turnover margins in the country. I think they've gotten their hands on the ball on tips and overthrows, guys have made some nice plays causing some fumbles, when those things happen, it's usually a combination of factors."

Oregon will be without CJ Verdell, who suffered a significant injury against Stanford, but return a strong runner in Travis Dye, along with a running quarterback in Anthony Brown who can make teams pay with his legs.

"Dye, who has played a lot of football for them," Wilcox said of who would be the main RB threat, "they've got some other young backs who are very talented, it's a good group. They throw pretty well, they ran it so well that at times they didn't need to throw. The quarterback is a threat to run, we know he can pass. The receivers, number 3, Johnson, Pittman, 14 (Kris Hutson), they've got some talented skill down the field and they'll use some RPO game, quick and intermediate passes, but they'll do some things where they'll launch it. Tight ends are also talented guys."

The defense will be familiar for the Cal offense, being that it's what they saw in practice while DeRuyter was at Cal. The Ducks will be without Kayvon Thibodeaux due to a targeting call in the second half against Stanford, and without safety Bennett Williams due to injury.

"Very similar defense to what we play," senior wideout Nikko Remigio noted, "nothing we haven't seen in the past, they're good at mixing up man and zone. Nothing that we haven't seen before, at the end of the day, we're our biggest enemy when it comes to that. If we're able to execute the way we do efficiently from practice and when we have showed those flashes in the games, regardless of who's out there, I think we'll be successful."

The bye week was meant to help a handful of guys, such as Nikko Remigio and Will Craig, to get healthy, as both Remigio and Craig are ready to go for Friday. RB DeCarlos Brooks is still week to week, while OLB Kuony Deng is still out for longer than that. It was not a week, as some might hope, to completely change personnel or otherwise.

"Some of the bye week was taking reps off guys like Cameron Goode, Elijah, Tre Clark, some of these guys that have a lot of reps under their belt," Wilcox said, "keeping them healthy, then utilizing those reps to help some of the guys who will play in the season, but maybe haven't played as many reps. In terms of flipping everything upside down, we did not do that. We need to improve on what we do and do better than what we've done in the past to get different results."

The inside linebacker position has seen some personnel change, with Evan Tattersall not seeing the field on defense against Washington State, with Trey Paster manning the spot on the field then and on the depth chart this week. It's a spot where among the five ILBs who have played, two are true freshmen and two are sophomores in a young group that has dealt with injury.

"If we were going today," Wilcox noted, "yes (Trey Paster would start), but we'll see. We tried some new guys in the past game with Trey Paster and Nate Rutchena, they had some good moments, Nate had a huge interception that you saw, Femi Oladejo is going to continue to get reps as well. We're gonna continue to make that room competitive, and there's some younger players getting good experience."

Tattersall has dealt with injury in the past and this year, and will likely be back on the field for the Oregon game, as he, like everyone else, needs to be consistent in his performance.

"Consistency with performance, that's what we've looking for in every position," Wilcox said, "Evan has done some good things during the season, and we're always going to base the playing time off of practice and production in games. Evan got dinged up a little bit, he's working through it and is and now it's about practice and production in games."

This past week may lead to a few more young guys playing, as a week of developmental practice gave younger players a chance to stick out.

"Some of the young d-linemen," Wilcox said about last week's standouts, "the young inside linebackers really benefitted from that. Couple of those younger safeties, Miles Williams is doing some really good things, I think he's going to do better, and offensively, everyone benefitted, I don't know if one benefitted more than the other, but we'll see when we get into playing games again."

With the bye week over and game week back again, Cal's seniors are eager to get back on the winning side of things.

"We don't have the type of guys who are going to give up," DB Elijah Hicks said,"we get closer and we get hungrier. We want to get this bad taste out of our mouth, it's making us work harder and ultimately go harder. It's time to win, that's the type of energy you see in practice and the meeting rooms, we're ready for this, just trying to show out."

Elijah Hicks raised over $67,000 a year ago to benefit No Kid Hungry during the COVID-19 pandemic, and has been working on another philanthropic effort. With the help of Scholarship America, the super-senior safety has put together an emergency grant program to help non-scholarship students at UC Berkeley.

"It's an emergency grant program through my Intercept Poverty foundation," Hicks noted, "we're helping students on campus to put 500-700 dollars in their pocket to help them clear some financial roadblocks, whether you can use some extra food, maybe a car broke down and you need some assistance getting it fixed, or you need a new laptop or need something fixed on a laptop. Those are things that I know affect people (and keep them) from studying. I wanted to created this and find a way to help students to focus on school, not on how they're going to get their next meal or if they're going to get their laptop fixed."

The program has been in the works for a while now, but is finally starting to come to fruition. Hicks noted his upbringing and the size of his family inspired him to try to make a difference.

"I have a big family, 12 (siblings) including me," Hicks said, "and I have family members who are in college who don't have a scholarship and family members who had to drop out and get a job because they couldn't focus on school. Being here at Cal, you're going to class with people who have to go to bed without eating or they may be eating a lot of Top Ramen, I relate to that struggle because those were things I had to do growing up. I want to figure out ways to help, I'm not the type of dude to complain about issues and problems, I'm going to find ways to solve them. I wanted to create some type of action."

A more formal announcement from Cal Athletics will be coming soon on the topic, but Hicks, a Campbell Trophy semifinalist and 2020 member of the Allstate AFCA Good Works team, is helping where he can.