Hello and welcome to Golden Nuggets! In this weekly write up, we try our best to cover all things Cal, Berkeley, Bearkeley, UC Berkeley, UnIguanaversity of Cal Berkeley, UnIguanaversity of Berkeley at Cal, BerkeleyIguananspire, and California State UnIguanaversity Berkeley that happened more or less in the last week! Let’s dig in!

Women’s Gymnastics Senior Day

Women’s Gymnastics celebrated Senior Day this past week! Congrats to Abbey Scanlon, Madelyn Williams, Mya Lauzon, Jordan Kane, and Ella Cesario!

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We’re Going Dancing!

Your California Women’s Basketball Team is going Dancing! The team got an 8 seed and will play Mississippi State on Saturday down in Los Angeles and hopefully go on a long and deep tourney run! Phew! Go Bears! Even honorary Golden Bear Steve Kerr chimed in.

For those in Los Angeles this Saturday, the Cal Alumni Association of LA is hosting a pre-game reception at 12:00 PM at The Garden at USC Hotel. Register for the reception here. Buy tickets to the game here.

Go Bears! Beat the Bulldogs! And Keep Dancing!

Iguana Spring Break

A team composed of biologists from UC Berkeley and USF are out with a fascinating analysis this week suggesting that around 34-million years ago, a bunch of Iguanas got sick of hanging out in the North American deserts and decided to Spring Break permanently in what is now Fiji by booking a flight ride? float via some sort of vegetation and floating 5,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean. No idea what sort of bag fees they had to pay.

“We found that the Fiji iguanas are most closely related to the North American desert iguanas, something that hadn’t been figured out before, and that the lineage of Fiji iguanas split from their sister lineage relatively recently, much closer to 30 million years ago, either post-dating or at about the same time that there was volcanic activity that could have produced land,” said lead author Simon Scarpetta, a herpetologist and paleontologist who is a former postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley and is now an assistant professor at USF in the Department of Environmental Science.” Read more about this fascinating study here! And be sure to catch the descendant of those iguanas tomorrow night on CBS as Survivor airs the fake merge episode.

Time to Rig Another Election

Cal Family, the time has come to rig another election. Help long-time friend and Wazzu Cougar Jeff Nusser spread the glory and splendor of Oski near and far by donating to his school’s food drive. Go Bears!

Hot Links

• The SF Chronicle wrote about the converted Classroom to Concert Hall with perfect acoustics. Read it here!

• With NCAA EA CFB 26 around the corner (hoo boy my editor should probably get rid of those acronyms), the Athletic covered how the video game will handle NIL payments next year.

• Someone put together a 27 Minute Marshawn Lynch Cal Highlight Reel

Golden Bear Honors

• Charmin Smith got a new contract locking the coach up for a while! Here’s hoping this means a deep tourney run!

• Cal Athletics continued to celebrate Women’s History Month and featured Gabrielle Abigor of Women’s Basketball and Sofia Forrest-Turner of the Dance Team

• Cal Big Give raised $15,783,076 across 14,529 individual donors!

• Giavonna Meeks was named to the First Team All-American Indoor Track Team. David Foster and Tyler Burns were named to the 2nd All-American Team.

• Justin Howell (Women’s Gymnastics Head Coach) hit the 250-Win mark!

• Co-Head Coach Elisabeth Crandall-Howell hit the 150-Win mark!

• Andrew Stojakovic was named to the ACC All-Tournament Team. Andre was also named to the All-District Team

• Mya Lauzon won the Mya Lauzon ACC Gymnast of the Week Award.

• Mya Lauzon and eMjae Frazier was also named All-ACC in all 5 Disciplines

• Maddie Williams was named All-ACC for Bars and Floor

• Kyen Mayhew was named All-ACC for Vault

• The Cal Basketball Student Managers made it to the 2025 Manager Games Championship Bracket. Vote on Twitter here!

• Women’s Gymnastics wore red and white bows (and Kyen Mayhew did up here hair) for coach Paul Carney who is fighting cancer. Get well coach!

• Nate Escalada was named the Jonathan and Judy Hoff Scholar-Athlete of the Week

Cal Athletics Recap

• Violet Williamson qualified for the Women’s NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships

• Geoffrey Vavitsas and Joshua Thai qualified for the Men’s NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships

• Men’s Basketball ended their tourney run in a loss to Stanford

• Men’s Tennis beat Louisville and Notre Dame

• Softball whomped Sacramento State in 5 Innings, and went 2-1 against Georgia Tech over the weekend (10-2, 5-4, 5-8)

• Lacrosse lost to Notre Dame but beat Marist

• Track and Field competed at the ACC Indoor Championships (Day 1, Day 2)

• Beach Volleyball lost narrowly to Florida State but beat Florida International, then beat LSU and lost to Texas

• Baseball went 2-2 on the week against Virginia (6-1, 8-10, 5-11) and Saint Mary’s (13-7)

• Women’s Gymnastics beat Arizona State, BYU, and Washington in the Haas Quad Meet #1, and then Arizona State, Stanford, and San Jose State in the Haas Quad Meet #2

• Women’s Tennis beat Stanford and SMU

• Rugby beat Army

• Men’s Gymnastics lost to Stanford

• Men’s Golf was in the thick of it at the Arizona Thunderbirds Intercollegiate, ending Day 1 in 2nd place and ending Day 2 in 4th Place

Cal Pros Recap

Cal Football hosts Pro Day this Thursday and its free to watch! Get the info here.

• Jaylen Tyson got a year’s supply of popcorn! Only problem is that his car is the popcorn bucket.

• Jared Goff was on Alex Smith’s Podcast

• Jake Curhan signed with the Cardinals

• Natalie Coughlin is a new owner for the Oakland Ballers!

• Morikawa started hot and tied for 9th at The Players Tournament

• Karlie Lema debuted with Bay FC in a 1-1 Draw. Catch her home debut this Saturday!

• Cam Bynum went back to the Philippines to hold a development camp for Flag Football

Next Week in Bear Territory

• Women’s Swimming and Diving NCAA Championships begin (3/19-3/22)

• Men’s and Women’s Tennis plays at Virginia (3/21) and Virginia Tech (3/23)

• Track and Field competes in the Hornet Invitational (3/21-3/22)

• Lacrosse travels to Durham to face Duke (3/21) and Rock Hill to face Winthrop (3/23)

• Softball travels to Charlottesville for a 3 Game series against Virginia (3/21-3/23) and Washington DC for a game against Howard (3/24)

• Beach Volleyball plays against LSU and Texas (3/21) and Florida International and Georgia State (3/22)

• Baseball plays a 3 Game series against Stanford (3/21-23) and one game at San Francisco (3/24)

• Rugby plays Saint Mary’s (3/22)

• Women’s Water Polo competes against USC (3/22)

• Women’s Basketball starts their NCAA Tournament against Mississippi State (3/22)

• Women’s Gymnastics competes in the ACC Championship (3/22)

Another week! And another set of tasty links. As always, let me know what I forgot. And keep it dialed here on Golden Nuggets for the latest in Iguana migration updates.