When Fernando Mendoza threw an incomplete third down with just over two minutes left Friday night, forcing Cal to punt with a 39-36 lead, every Golden Bears fan — and probably Cal players and coaches, too , even if they would never admit it. – must have had the same nauseating thought:

Here we go again.

Cal would end up with 500 yards of offense. But it looked like the Bears were going to let a 15-point lead early in the fourth quarter turn into a discouraging loss, much like the loss to Miami when Cal had a 20-point lead in the fourth quarter before losing by a point when Miami scored. with 26 seconds left.

Cal quarterback Fernando Mendoza completed 40 passes for a career-high 385 yards and completed passes to 11 different receivers. But it looked like Cal would let all its good work slip away, as it did against North Carolina State, which overcame a 23-10 fourth-quarter deficit to beat the Bears by one point.

Cal had 31 first downs and ran 87 offensive plays against Wake Forest in the Bears’ second impressive offensive performance. But it looked like Cal would let those impressive numbers fade into insignificance, as they did against Florida State, when the Bears blew a 9-7 lead early in the fourth quarter, ultimately failing to score the go-ahead goal after reached the Seminoles. “12-yard line with 1:20 left. The Bears dominated this game statistically, but lost by five points.

Cal would finish Friday’s game with seven sacks and four putouts, go 4-of-4 on field goals, including two 54-yard field goals from Ryan Coe, linebacker Hunter Barth would have an outstanding game and receivers Tobias Merriweather. and Kyion Grayes would make their debut at Cal. But somehow the Bears seemed destined to let another big win slip away, as they did against Pitt when Coe missed a 40-yard field goal with 1:50 left in a loss to two points against the Panthers.

It would surely happen again. And when Wake Forest quarterback Hank Bachmeier completed a 10-yard pass on the first play after Cal’s punt before the clock stopped for the two-minute timeout, Cal seemed to condemned again as he tried to cling to his three-point lead. One way or another, the Demon Deacons would surely score the winning touchdown in the final seconds or at least kick a tying field goal and then win in overtime.

“I didn’t see anyone panicking on our team,” Cal cornerback Nohl Williams said.

But the story is hard to ignore. Four ACC games, four losses by a combined nine-point margin, with Cal holding fourth-quarter leads in three of them. Friday’s game would mean five conference losses, perhaps by four points, perhaps in overtime, after Cal had a 15-point lead in the fourth quarter. The one Cal play that would have tipped the scales in the Bears’ favor had been absent in each of the four conference losses, and there was no indication that would happen this time either.

Then something strange happened. Something that didn’t follow the script. Something that wasn’t even in the Bears’ plans.

Inside linebacker Liam Johnson, a transfer from Princeton, missed most of preseason camp and the first three games of the season due to injury. And he wouldn’t have been present in Friday’s game in the final moments if Cade Uluave hadn’t left the game in the second quarter due to an injury.

However, with Uluave on the sideline in street clothes, Johnson was on the field with two minutes remaining when Bachmeier threw a 13-yard pass intended for Taylor Morin at the 40-yard line. But instead of a reception that would have brought Wake Forest closer to a tying field goal, Johnson cut in front of Morin and intercepted the pass at the Wake Forest 42-yard line.

It was Johnson’s first interception of the season and third of his college career after picking off two passes in his three seasons at Princeton.

Oh, yeah, Cal scored a touchdown afterward to make the final score 46-36 in favor of Cal, which made a difference for the players since the Bears were favored by 7.5 points. But the match really ended when Johnson retired the pick to avoid another late-game disappointment.

Mendoza suggested that these late losses became a talking point and added motivation.

“Oh, yeah, we talk about it all the time,” Mendoza said. “We said this wouldn’t happen again.”

He’s a player who speaks. Now here is a coach speaking and you will notice the difference.

“When you start worrying about what might happen in 15 or 30 minutes or at the end of the game, you don’t really focus on what you need to focus on,” said Cal head coach, Justin Wilcox.

“It’s really about taking the focus away from the result of the match and putting it here now, not about what happened in the last match or last week or a month ago, or what happened could happen in 30 or 40 minutes. It’s literally being in the moment.

Cal fans weren’t “in the moment” when Bachmeier threw that pass to Morin. They thought, “Here comes that end-game agony again. »

Coaches always say that one play doesn’t win or lose a game, but fortunately for Cal, Liam Johnson was in the moment, and the complexion of Cal’s season changed in that moment.

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