CAL QUIETS BOO BIRDS, THANKS TO ASU BOO-BOO BEARS OVERCOME 10-POINT DEFICIT IN FOURTH QUARTER By RON BERGMAN Mercury News Staff Writer BERKELEY -- Bruce Snyder, who used to win a lot of games for Cal, won one again Saturday for the Bears. Huge problem for Bruce. He now coaches Arizona State. And the play he called in the third quarter gave Cal the momentum to come from 10 points behind and beat the Sun Devils 25-21. That's right. Snyder got previously winless Cal off the schneider and lost for the first time in three tries to his old team. The Bears, 0-2 in games against Western Athletic Conference foes, are 1-0 in the Pacific 10 Conference and undefeated as anyone in the race to the Rose Bowl. In the third quarter, however, it appeared the only way the Bears would ever get to Pasadena would be on a tour package charter bus. Down 21-11, with their fans and maybe even Oski raining boos down upon them from the Memorial Stadium stands, the Bears were about to fall behind 28-11. The Sun Devils had a second-and-two at the Cal 13. Quarterback Jake Plummer had made the Cal secondary look baffled by completing 9 of 15 passes for 180 yards and two touchdowns. But instead of letting Plummer pass or Chris Hopkins -- who finished as the game's leading rusher with 118 yards in 25 carries -- run, Snyder asked Hopkins get this -- to pass. The ball fluttered into the end zone. The only question for Cal safety Ricky Spears was whether he could hold on to the ball for an interception after he was hit by intended receiver Keith Poole. Spears held on. And that was it for ASU (1-3, 1-1). The Bears' beleaguered defense, which had treated the ball in the air as something not quite legal over the first three periods, cleared on the concept and shut out the Sun Devils the rest of the way. And quarterback Dave Barr, showing some of the magic of last year, put together a pair of magnificent drives in the fourth quarter that led to a pair of touchdown runs by reserve tailback Tyrone Edwards. The winning TD, an 8-yarder around right end, came with 2 minutes, 3 seconds to go. By this time, the fans were cheering wildly and the Bears were fired up. They sacked Plummer the last two downs the Sun Devils had the ball, convincing Snyder that he shouldn't have been so cute with the halfback pass. ''There were about 10 plays I'd like to have back,'' Snyder said. ''That was one of them.'' The play was a hit for Barr, who jumped through the window of opportunity. Nearly half his total of 254 passing yards -- 118 of them -- came in the fourth quarter. ''I could not believe it,'' Barr said of the halfback pass. ''That's something they'll be questioning all week.'' The question in the first half was whether Cal's defense, which had been sturdy in the first two games, had become as inept as the offense. Two long scoring plays in the second quarter made it appear Cal was rolling toward its first 0-3 start in 14 years. Hopkins ran 35 yards untouched into the end zone. And Poole caught a pass from Plummer at the Cal 42, left badly beaten cornerback Kevin Devine in his wake, and completed a 66-yard TD play that gave ASU a 14-3 lead. Barr connected with wide receiver Fred Sims for a 29-yard scoring strike with 3:24 to go in the first half, then added a two-point conversion pass to tight end Sean Bullard. Arizona State boosted its lead to 21-11 early in the third quarter on an 11-yard pass from Plummer to Poole. The Bears couldn't do anything on their next series. Ryan Longwell shanked an 18-yard punt after a bad snap. Linebacker Jerrott Willard picked up what could have been a costly personal foul penalty. Plummer hit Poole on a 13-yard slant pattern to the 13. Hopkins took a pitch and started around right end. He stopped. He threw the ball and the game away. ------------------------------ BARR FEELS CROSSED BEFORE LEADING BEARS TO HAPPY ENDING By ANN KILLION BERKELEY THE FALL is hard and fast. From Big Man on Campus to the butt of professors' jokes. All it takes is two miserable weeks in September to complete the transformation. It happened to Dave Barr, who didn't have to wait for a humbling midseason collapse this year. His team had been humiliated on consecutive Saturdays by party schools, places students flock to for the perfect tan, not the ultimate football experience. He had gone from a potential Heisman candidate to a guy who slumped behind his notebook while his sociology prof took potshots at his team, from star quarterback to a nobody who had his football locker robbed -- of 80 bucks and a fishing license -- during the week. ''I can't even tell you how miserable it's been,'' Barr said. But Barr can walk through Sproul Plaza on Monday morning with his head high. He'll be slapped on the back again, high-fived in the hallways. He's just not sure he has the stomach for the Cal fans' turnaround. The Bears were booed off the field at halftime Saturday because they ran out the clock. They were booed regularly during the second half, whenever Barr was forced to dump the ball off to a back rather than go deep. And when the game was over and Cal had achieved its desperately needed first victory of the season, beating Arizona State and former Cal Coach Bruce Snyder 25-21, Barr's postgame celebration was notable for what it didn't include. He didn't toss the ball into the student section, as he did last year in the team's comeback victories over Arizona and Oregon. ''And if I wasn't such a gentleman, there might have been other things thrown up there,'' he said. ''Cal students, Cal alumni and Cal fans -- I consider that to be family. Those people are a part of us, and they take credit for being a part of us. They're all smiling right now, but when things are down, they're the first to point fingers. I'm really frustrated by it.'' Such is life with high expectations. Booing has been a rare pastime at Memorial Stadium. But when a school goes 9-4 and demolishes a Big Ten team in a bowl game -- even the Alamo Bowl -- people start to expect something more than losses to Hawaii and San Diego State. ''They're entitled, but to hear those boos doesn't help us win,'' Barr said. What did help the Bears win Saturday is that -- even if fans were pointing fingers -- they didn't point fingers at themselves. They stayed calm. They stayed collected. And they stayed behind their leader, Barr. ''He was really taking charge out there,'' tailback Tyrone Edwards said. ''He really kept us focusing, was telling everyone what to do. He was like another coach out there, coaching every position. It was comfortable being out there with him.'' It didn't hurt the Bears that Snyder -- who had beaten his former team the past two seasons in Tempe, Ariz. -- made perhaps the worst call in college football history. In the third quarter, ASU had a chance to take a 17-point lead. But on first-and-10 from the Cal 13, Snyder called for a halfback option. Chris Hopkins, who had been running the ball down the Bears' throat all day, threw a floater directly to Cal safety Ricky Spears in the end zone. And after the game Snyder had the gall to say: ''Cal's like us . . . they're very well coached.'' Actually, this was a battle of two mediocre teams. Cal was erratic, at times downright awful. The defense played well most of the game, but then would give up a big play. The offense would play OK, then give up a sack. As in the past two games, Cal's receivers couldn't get open. When they did, they often dropped the ball -- 13 drops in three games. So Barr -- who had met with Coach Keith Gilbertson last week and persuaded him to put in a package of easy release plays -- was forced to dump the ball off, to the displeasure of the Old Blues. ''I didn't want to go scrambling around like a chicken with my head cut off,'' said Barr, who was sacked eight times last week. ''So we worked it out to the point where I make sure I have a safety valve.'' Down by 10 in the fourth quarter, Barr threw a ball into the end zone that was picked off on a spectacular play by ASU safety Eddie Cade. But from that point on, Barr was 7 of 7 for 81 yards. With five minutes left, the Bears took over at their 40. On second-and-11, Barr finally got a chance to go deep, finding tight end Sean Bullard for a 30-yard gain. ''When the game was on the line, he made big plays,'' Gilbertson said. Cal scored to take the lead, but Barr kept his teammates composed, warning them not to celebrate or shout things at the ASU coaching staff. When victory was finally ensured, he went over to greet Snyder, the man who recruited him. The past two years, the victorious ASU coaches wanted to chat. Not this year. ''Maybe when we see them in the off-season they'll be a little nicer now that we have the upper hand,'' Barr said. Maybe the Cal fans will be a little nicer, too. After all, the miserable Bears are tied for first in the Pac-10. - ------------------------------------------------ SNYDER RICH, BUT MERELY BREAKS EVEN By RON BERGMAN Mercury News Staff Writer BERKELEY -- Cal Coach Keith Gilbertson and Arizona State Coach Bruce Snyder passed each other Saturday. Gilbertson's record at Cal now is above .500 at 14-13. Snyder, the man Gilbertson replaced in 1992, fell to 13-13 at his new school after the Bears won 25-21. This was Snyder's first visit to Memorial Stadium since he left in 1992 to take a five-year contract worth a reported $1.675 million from the Sun Devils. The Cal Alumni Band made Snyder feel right at home by playing, ''We're in the Money,'' at halftime while spelling out Snyder's initials. Then they drew a vertical line through the S to make it look like a dollar sign. ''I'm human,'' Snyder said later about his return to the campus where he revived the football program. ''I have a memory. But once you start coaching the game, calling the plays, that has nothing to do with it. ''We needed to solve our own problems. The focus wasn't really Cal. If we came in 3-0, maybe that would enter into it, but we had to solve our own problems.'' TIGHT ENDS APPEAR: After not throwing a single pass toward the tight ends in the loss to Hawaii a week earlier, Cal quarterback Dave Barr located them. All told, Barr completed seven passes to tight ends Sean Bullard and Tony Gonzalez. That doesn't include a two-point a conversion pass to Bullard, but it does include a 30-yard reception he made falling down on the winning 60-yard touchdown drive in the fourth quarter. With No. 1 target Iheanyi Uwaezuoke out with a sprained right foot, Barr threw only five of his 27 complete passes to wide receivers. ''It's about time we threw more to the tight ends,'' Bullard said, laughing, before getting serious. ''We had to stay in and block against Hawaii because they had five men on the line of scrimmage all the time.'' No one caught more passes than fullback Johnny Tavake, making his season debut after recovering from a stress fracture in his right shoulder. Tavake had six receptions. He also led in drops, with two of Cal's four. Cal receivers have dropped 13 passes in the first three games. ''If Barr had 13 more completions, we'd be 3-0 instead of 1-2,'' said Gilbertson. ''The passes we dropped today were right there (in the chest). If the receivers had been wearing Velcro jerseys, the ball would have stuck to them.'' SPEARS MAKES POINT: Senior safety Ricky Spears, whose third-quarter interception of a halfback pass thrown into the the end zone by Arizona State's Chris Hopkins turned the game around, tried to make it no big thing. ''I'm a safety, and that's why I'm back there,'' Spears said. ''That's why they call me a safety. I just did my safety thing. It's my job. ''That was a turning point. I don't know whether it was the turning point.'' Spears has made an interception in each of the first three games.