Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP

California players and fans celebrate with the Axe after the Golden Bears upset No. 14 Stanford on Saturday night.

Vereen has responded with the two best games of his career the past two weeks in wins over Arizona and Stanford. Running effectively off direct snaps in Cal’s form of the wildcat, Vereen overpowered the Cardinal. The Bears drove more than 70 yards on four consecutive TD drives starting late in the second quarter, three ending with short runs by Vereen.

“I never carried that many times and never thought I’d carry that many times,” Vereen said. “I just had so much emotion, I didn’t think about any tiredness or pain.”

Riley added a 12-yard touchdown pass to Marvin Jones early in the fourth quarter to give the Bears a 31-21 lead, silencing honorary captain Tiger Woods and the rest of the red-clad portion in the largest crowd in the fourth year at the remodeled Stanford Stadium.

Trailing 31-28 with 3½ minutes to go, Stanford coach Jim Harbaugh decided to go for it on fourth-and-8 despite having all three timeouts remaining. Luck badly missed his receiver on the fourth-down throw, giving Cal the ball back.

The Bears settled for a field goal to go up 34-28 with 2:42 to go, with Tedford calling for Riley to take a knee to center the ball on third down.

“I didn’t want to risk anything,” Tedford said.

Stanford drove down the field and was in position to win until Luck’s interception. Harbaugh put his arm around his quarterback as they walked off the field following the key turnover.

“I should have given him a better play,” Harbaugh said.

Luck entered the game as the top-rated passer in the Pac-10 but finally looked like the redshirt freshman he is against a Cal defense that has played its best two games the past two weeks. Luck finished 10 for 30 for 157 yards.

This marked the third time this season that the Cardinal lost a game in which they led by at least 14 points. This one was especially painful because it came against Cal and ended the team’s Rose Bowl hopes. Stanford would have been eliminated anyway when Oregon beat Arizona 44-41 in double overtime, but now the Cardinal can’t even share the conference title.

“This one hurts,” Gerhart said. “Everybody takes pride in winning this game. The season has been decent and getting to a bowl game is nice but we had greater goals than that. When all is said and done we’ll have an empty pit in our stomach that we didn’t get the Axe back.”

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