Around The Pac-12: Week 8

Washington State 34, Oregon 20

Since I wasn’t able to watch this game I can’t for the life of me understand how Oregon was just so wildly ineffective in the first half. Consider these drives:

Drive 1: 3 plays, 1 yard, punt

Drive 2: 3 plays, 3 yards, punt

Drive 3: 3 plays, -7 yards, punt

Drive 4: 4 plays, 9 yards, punt

Drive 5: 5 plays, 29 yards, turnover on downs

18 first half plays?! 6 combined yards in your first four drives?!?! What in the world happened to you Oregon?!

Scoring 20 points on five 2nd half drives felt much more normal and representative of how you would expect Oregon’s offense to perform against just about anybody, including Wazzu. The game was lost when the Oregon offense just . . . went missing for 30 minutes. Somebody in the comments tell me what they saw in those first two quarters because I’m honestly flabbergasted.

Washington 27, Colorado 13

With Laviska Shenault absent due to a toe injury (currently listed as day-to-day) was this really going to end any other way? To a certain extent I’m impressed that the Buffs managed to hang around for 3 quarters and to get 13 points without their most important weapon available.

Without Shenaught Colorado was hampered by an inability to get big plays (only two gains longer than 16 yards) and while Washington was hardly dominant offensively they moved the ball efficiently enough to earn a reasonably comfortable win.

Utah 41, USC 28

Utah may have finally found their stride on offense. Tyler Huntley threw for 341 and 4 TDs on 22/29 passes. He was simply superb in shredding apart this USC defense. The PAC-12 south is a total crap shoot at this point, but I would give the edge to Utah and Colorado. They might have the most complete teams out of the 6 at this point. The health of JT Daniels and Matt Fink is also in question after this game. Daniels went out with concussion type symptoms and Fink injured his ribs. Jack Sears is the only scholarship QB left on the roster with 2 walk-ons behind him. The QB situation for USC going forward could be very interesting.

UCLA 31, Arizona 30

This was a pretty sloppy version of a shootout. Arizona was without Khalil Tate once again so Rhett Rodriguez led the offense. J.J. Taylor and Gary Brightwell both eclipsed 100 yards on less than 20 carries each. UCLA, on the other hand, returned to grad transfer Wilton Speight who was able to throw for 204 yards and 2 TDs on 17/27 passing. Joshua Kelley was the workhorse once again with 31 carries for 136 yards and 2 TDs. Arizona was down 1 with 6:28 left on the clock, but were unable to get a single stop and UCLA just rushed from their own 25 to the Arizona 15 over the remaining clock. This was the second highest scoring game in the PAC-12 this week and it came from the two worst teams in the conference. Weirdly fitting.

Stanford 20, Arizona State 13

Thursday night game in Tempe, was as boring as they come. 3 total touchdowns and 12 Punts on 24 total possessions. K.J. Costello was throwing for 7.97 yards per attempt, and Manny Wilkins throwing for 8.21 yards per attempt. Both teams could not run the ball nor get first downs. Cameron Scarlett was the games leading rusher with 53 yards while Wilkins led ASU on the ground with 41 yards. Both teams dared each other to throw first, and both teams were terrible to mediocre at it. Furd stays in the thick of the fight for the PAC-12 North, while ASU is on pace to have a worse record than any year under Todd Graham.