During the course of Big Game Week, I was thinking about how awesome the Cal-Stanford men’s basketball rivalry has been when compared to what we’ve seen on the football field over this last decade. What’s made the men’s basketball rivalry so much fun, is the back and forth nature that it has taken. No matter who the coach is, how good the teams are, it’s almost always a dog fight and truly unpredictable. The fact that Cal was 2-0 at Maples Pavilion during the Wyking Jones era pretty much sums it up. Below is a recap of the results of Cal-Stanford men’s basketball games since the 2009 Big Game.

2009-10: Cal 92 Stanford 66 (Berkeley). Cal 71 Stanford 61 (Stanford)

2010-11: Stanford 82 Cal 68 (Stanford). Cal 74 Stanford 55 (Berkeley)

2011-12: Cal 69 Stanford 59 (Berkeley). Stanford 75 Cal 70 (Stanford). Cal 77 Stanford 71 (Pac-12 Tournament)

2012-13: Stanford 69 Cal 59 (Stanford). Stanford 83 Cal 70 (Berkeley). Weird fact: Cal made the NCAA Tournament that year while Stanford missed it.

2013-14: Cal 69 Stanford 62 (Stanford). Stanford 80 Cal 69 (Berkeley)

2014-15: Stanford 69 Cal 59 (Berkeley). Stanford 72 Cal 61 (Stanford)

2015-16: Stanford 77 Cal 71 (Stanford). Cal 76 Stanford 61 (Berkeley). Note: This was the year Cal was the #4 seed in their NCAA Tournament region. Also, the last time Cal made the tourney.

2016-17: Cal 66 Stanford 55 (Berkeley). Stanford 73 Cal 68 (Stanford)

2017-18: Cal 77 Stanford 74 (Stanford). Stanford 77 Cal 73 (Berkeley). Stanford 76 Cal 58 (Pac-12 Tournament)

2018-19: Stanford 84 Cal 81 (Berkeley). Cal 64 Stanford 59 (Stanford)

During this 10 year span, Cal and Stanford men’s basketball have played each other 22 times including post-season play with Cal sporting a 10-12 record. That’s nearly an even split. Even more crazy is the fact that the home team is just 11-9 and has lost four straight games!

During this wild stretch of games, there have been some pretty incredible memories. Both from games Cal has won and games that Cal has lost. There’s the Grant Anticevich 3-pointer late in the game to win 77-74 at Maples Pavilion (2017-18), the time Mark Madsen and other Stanford coaches got ejected because there was a brawl on the court (Stanford won 83-70 in Berkeley on Senior Night), watching Matt Bradley’s basket get waived off as a block was reversed to a charge (last year’s game at Berkeley), and then watching Cal avenge that loss with a 64-59 win at Maples Pavilion, giving them a three-game winning streak heading into the Pac-12 tournament. That’s what rivalries are all about. That back and forth nature where anything can happen.

In contrast, on the football field we’ve seen Stanford win every Big Game from 2010-2018. That’s nine years in a row. A lot of those years, Cal was fielding a team that had no business being on the same field as Stanford. Many times, Stanford would come into the Big Game ranked while Cal would come in with only a handful of wins and a defense that couldn’t stop anybody. In those years, it was a foregone conclusion that Stanford would win. The only question was by how many points.

Even more bizarre is the fact that right before this current Stanford streak, Cal had won 7 of the previous 8 Big Games from 2002-2009. And then going back further (1995-2001), Stanford won 7 Big Games in a row. Not since the 1980s have we seen a decade with any sort of back and forth trend.

This year, Cal and Stanford come into the Big Game pretty evenly matched: Cal is 5-5 overall and 2-5 in Pac-12 play while Stanford comes in at 4-6 overall and 3-5 in Pac-12 play. Stanford is a 2 point favorite which means that this is essentially a toss-up. When looking at the history of the Big Game (both recent and not so recent), it’s rare to find a game where it truly was a toss-up going in. While Stanford fans may prefer to have another lopsided year, it’s certainly nice for Cal fans and for the rivalry as a whole, to have a game that truly needs to be decided on the field.

The purpose of me writing this isn’t to say that Stanford should give the Axe back to Cal as an act of charity or pity. If Cal is going to get the Axe back, they should do it because they played the better game for the full 60 minutes. What I am saying, however, is that this rivalry has become stagnant and boring due to the same team winning every single time. I do believe that in order to have the full rivalry experience as it were, you need to experience both the highs and the lows. Not just one or the other.

I hope that in the coming years, the Big Game can become more like the men’s basketball rivalry where games are close, unpredictable, and full of amazing moments on both sides. This game needs some life injected back into it and it’s on Cal to make it happen.