Justin Wilcox is never happy about losing, and the Cal coach summed up his emotions in the aftermath of Cal's Sunday loss to UCLA.

"Everybody hates losing, it makes you want to throw up," Wilcox said. "I guess that's an emotion."

And so it goes for the Bears, who have Oregon State up next and a couple of guys now out for the year.

Cal has a couple of injuries to report, per Wilcox. Nose guard Aaron Maldonado (lower body) and wide receiver Jeremiah Hunter (upper body) have been ruled out for the season due to injury. Maldonado was set to start at nose guard while Hunter was in the wide receiver rotation for the Bears as a true freshman.

Also of note, freshman nose guard Stanley McKenzie could be back for the Bears this weekend, as the true freshman will need to get cleared by medical staff, per Wilcox. McKenzie missed Sunday's game for undisclosed reasons.

Maldonado and McKenzie's absence Sunday saw Brett Johnson filling in at nose and JH Tevis getting his first career start at defensive end. Monroe Young took some of the reps at wide receiver outside of the core four group there (of Nikko Remigio, Makai Polk, Kekoa Crawford and Trevon Clark), and Hunter would've likely taken reps from that group as well.

As a defensive coach would, Wilcox noted the tackling issues that exacerbated other issues on defense, and while there were a couple of busts, the tackling issues made them that much worse against the Bruins, as the Bears allowed more than 24 points for only the fourth time since the beginning of 2018.

"A lot of what we thought during the game was confirmed on the video," "I think the big things that stood out, the tackling on defense. We had a significant number of missed tackles that resulted in I think 150 yards after contact. You've got to give them credit, they've got some skilled athletes and sometimes that makes them tougher to tackle. But we had opportunities to create some negative plays and put them in some longer down and distances, which would have really helped throughout that game, even if we make more than we did. We expected to tackle better than we did, and it made it really hard to get off the field on defense."

Offensively, the Bears struggled to 2.9 yards per play, one of their worst outputs under Wilcox. The Cal coach felt that while the assignments were there, the execution was poor.

"Offensively, it was the rhythm," Wilcox noted, "our align and assign and communication was pretty good, but we had unforced errors that we had to clean up. We knew for the most part who we were blocking, but the execution across the board wasn't quite where we expected it to be. We know we need to get better at every position, it starts with the head coach and all the coaches preparing the best we can with the information that we have."

Cal now gets a game with Oregon State in Corvallis Saturday afternoon. The Beavers come in 0-2, but had a controversial 4th down spot go against them against Washington, one that could've propelled them to a win against the Huskies. The game, as of now (Oregon State did have some COVID-19 issues) is set to be played at 12:30 PM Saturday.

"We started yesterday," Wilcox said of Cal preparing for the Beavers, "they're a really well coached team. Offensively, you're going to see some of the stuff that Jonathan has done over the years, with different formations and personnel groupings, got a really good back (Jermar Jefferson), good at tight end, OL is really well coached. They give you issues offensively and defensively they're similar to us. I've worked with coach Tibesar, their defensive coordinator, some years back. They're multiple, play some odd and even fronts, play nickel and base."

Cal played 12 true freshmen Sunday, as Wilcox noted prior to the season that 'everyone will have a role.' For a handful of guys, it was getting reps in garbage time. For others, like Tommy Christakos or Muelu Iosefa, it was specialized (with Christakos kicking off, Iosefa coming in to backup Deng and Tattersall on defense). It's something that's expected to happen more as the year goes on.

"It was good to see a lot of them out there getting some valuable reps," Wilcox said, "I would expect to see more and more as we get them out there into the season, and as we mentioned before, there's no substitute for game experience, every time they go out there, they're going to get better. I'm going to expect those guys to garner more reps and possibly some other guys we didn't see as much."

In addition to those true freshmen, multiple players saw their first action in non-special teams roles in Craig Woodson, Ben Coleman and Blake Antzoulatos.