We're about 24 hours late passing these along, but defensive coordinator Chris Ball and the coach, Jim Walden, made their weekly appearances with Ian Furness on 950-AM KJR in Seattle yesterday. As an added bonus, we're also passing along Furness' interview with Jon Wilner of the San Jose Mercury news*, who covers Cal and whom you might remember as the guy we talked to for the podcast back when we played Stanford. (Seems like forever ago, doesn't it?)
*Up next: We're just going to start streaming Furness' show daily on our site. (Kidding. Sort of.)
Ball talks a lot about how the coaching staff spent the bye week, which inevitably turned to recruiting. When you listen to him talk, there's little doubt as to why they're getting recruits to buy what they're selling, despite the mounting losses. He also talks some about Cal.
Walden first rambles on about stuff from "back in the day" that really doesn't mean anything, but is entertaining nonetheless. He then gets into what kind of a chance the Cougs have against Cal. (Answer: Not much.)
Wilner -- who has one of the best Pac-10 blogs around, one of the few that I always make sure to read -- kicks his interview off by talking about the Pac-10 in general, then turns to the game. He thinks the only way the Cougs keep it respectable is if they can control the line of scrimmage on defense (something it almost sounds like he thinks is a possibility) and put the game on Kevin Riley's average arm, something with which I concur.