by | October 18, 2012 · 4:16 pm

Pac-12 Picks Week 8

Sorry there hasn’t been any content here this week.  I’ll probably have an Around the Pac-12 and mascot melee post up tomorrow but I’ve been too busy to get to it before then.  For now, you just get the picks.  The picks, just the picks.

We had another decent week as far as the picks went last week, and, not to brag, but the Good Guys are out-picking most of the experts.  Since the games start in about an hour, we’ll get right to the picks.

Thursday:

Oregon at Arizona State

The Good Guys:  Oregon 😦

Saturday:

Colorado at USC

The Good Guys:  USC

Stanford at California

Andrew, Joe, Matthew:  Stanford
Dan:  Cal

Utah at Oregon State

The Good Guys:  Oregon State

As you can see, there won’t be much separation this week and there isn’t much separation in the standings as they are.  As I’ve been saying, these could come down to the bowl picks!  Here are the standings:

Standings:
Dan 43-12
Joe 43-12
Matthew 42-13
Andrew 42-13

We should start picking different teams I guess.  Great minds think alike.  The UW-Arizona predictions will be up tomorrow and hopefully a few more posts as well.  For now, here’s this.

Andrew

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by | October 13, 2012 · 9:12 am

UW vs. USC Predictions

I’m already late putting this up, so I’ll just dive into the picks.  If you want a little more of an introduction, read Andrew’s post below.  Here we go!

Dan

In the Sark era, the Huskies have typically been extremely motivated to play the Trojans. UW has won 2 of the past 3 meetings, but it is hard to know which Washington team will show up tomorrow. Against top tier competition like LSU and Oregon, UW has not put up a fight. This is a trend that has developed over the past few years, with few exceptions. USC may or may not be in the same top tier category, but there is no denying the talent on their roster is second to none. CenturyLink Field is not the same home field advantage that Husky Stadium offers, and when it comes down to it, I see the Trojans making enough explosive plays and rattling Keith all day long. The Huskies will put up a fight, but fall short tomorrow.

USC-30, Washington-20

Joe

For some reason I feel good about this game. Maybe it’s just my optimistic side coming out, maybe it’s pure psychology after getting waxed by Oregon, or maybe it’s the fact that USC simply doesn’t have a stellar track record playing on the road in Seattle. Whatever the treason, I see the Huskies bouncing back this week and playing well.  USC obviously presents problems offensively. Lee and Woods paired with Barkley and Redd is potent. USC will score in this game. How much is the key. With the Dawgs offense struggling to find an identity, even a mediocre offensive performance by the Trojans will likely net them a win.  I hope to see Sark commit to the run early and often. Bishop Sankey has played well enough to earn the trust of the coaches and see more touches. I’m not high on USC’s defense, so I expect UW to move the ball. Unfortunately red zone offense has been poor and Keith Price simply hasn’t played like the Price we saw last year, mostly due to lousy pass protect.  In the end, even though my heart and a big part of my head says UW pulls the upset, I’ll go with Vegas on this one.

USC 33 – UW 20

Andrew

The Huskies will have to fight an uphill battle tomorrow against a team that is more talented than they are.  Yeah, what else is new?  When looking at the Husky schedule before the season we all hoped that the Huskies would be 3-3 after these first 6 games.  Sure, 4-2 would be great but it just wasn’t very reasonable.  Now, it doesn’t seem all that far away.  The Huskies play at home tomorrow where they have won 10 of their last 11 games.  The Trojan defense is giving up 26 points per game on the road and haven’t played any dynamic offenses yet.  The Huskies haven’t put together a complete game yet, no, not even against Stanford.  I see this game either going to the Huskies in a close win or the Trojans in a 2 or 3 score game.  As I’ve given you stats and information that suggests that the Dawgs might have a chance tomorrow, all I can think about Robert Woods and Marqise Lee.  We only have one really good corner and that’s the biggest reason I’m picking USC.  I hope I’m wrong.

USC 35 – UW 20

Matthew

Andrew’s written before about how terrible I am at making predictions.  In the heat of the moment during a game, as soon as I make a pronouncement about how the game’s going to go, the opposite happens.  So I’m always a little hesitant to pick my team, knowing my unique jinxing powers.  I’m also leading our Pac-12 predictions though, so I think this power only exists during games.  Anyway, I’m picking the Huskies to win today.  I’m by no means positive they will, but I think they have a great shot.  They’re slowly working on their issues.  The offensive line has improved and was fine against Oregon, not a strength but at least serviceable. The running game and defense are far ahead of where they were last season and early this year, respectively.  I’m betting today is the day the Keith Price and the Husky passing game explodes.  The Dawgs will have to cut out the mistakes they made at Oregon, but they do much better at that in Seattle and when the opponent isn’t Oregon.  I don’t think anyone feels that this is a game the Huskies have no chance of winning.  I think the Huskies play their best game of the year and pull out the upset.

UW 27 – USC 21

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by | October 12, 2012 · 11:22 pm

Just A Reminder

Today the Huskies play USC at 4 p.m.  Gus Johnson is calling the game on Fox so there’s even more motivation to watch this game.  Predictions will be posted tomorrow morning but it’s not secret that most people don’t favor the Huskies in this game.  The betting line in this game favors USC by about 11.  All the experts are picking Matt Barkley and his two All-American receivers to win.  And they probably will.  Sure, the Huskies have a decent chance of an upset but it would be just that if they won.  An upset.

But do you remember the last time USC came to town?  Jake Locker cemented his place in Husky fans memories.  Sark proved himself in his 3rd game being here.  A program started their march upwards.  Yes, that march has gone a little slower than all of us would have liked but at least we have actual win totals to point to that show improvement.  That doesn’t really happen with the baseball team in this city.  The Huskies are playing against the odds tomorrow but last time USC was in Seattle this happened:

For 7 or 8 years, being a Husky fan felt fairly hopeless.  Then this happened.  I haven’t felt hopeless about a Husky football game since.

One more for good measure.

Playing in Seattle, at home, has now turned into an advantage for the Dawgs.  Just like the good ol’ days.  I’m hoping that it stays that way at 4 P.M. today.

Go Huskies!

Andrew

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by | October 11, 2012 · 8:16 pm

The Confusing Mariner Off-season

Let’s take a quick break from football to talk about the Mariners.  You may or may not have noticed that the Mariners’ season ended a while ago.  You may or may not care.  The Mariners may not have crossed your mind since about July.  Most likely, you hadn’t thought about them until you noticed one of the playoff games this week and thought, “Playoffs.  The Mariners must be done for the year.”

To sum up quickly, the M’s were bad, and then they were decent.  Some players were disappointing, but some surprised positively.  Felix is the best.  And, in the end, they were pretty much exactly what we expected: a 75 win team.  That’s obviously not great, but it is improvement.

This off-season is one of the more confusing I remember the Mariners facing, at least from my perspective.  The Mariners front office might not be confused at all.  I hope they’re not.  To us on the outside, however, there are three big issues complicating any expectations:

They’re still young. More importantly, most of their young guys haven’t clearly demonstrated their capabilities.  Moving forward, Seager looks like a sure bet to at least be average.  Jaso clearly has a role, but whether it’s at catcher or elsewhere is less clear.  Saunders was a revelation, but if you’re being picky, he’s not a sure thing at all.  Montero was okay and should get better, but again, no guarantees, plus the catcher defense thing lingers.  Ackley and Smoak were huge disappointments, but it seems too early to give up on them, especially Ackley.  Lots of questions, few clear answers. Continue reading →

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by | October 11, 2012 · 3:09 pm

Pac-12 Picks – Week 7

Last week was a decent week for us, as Joe and Matthew went 5-0 and Dan and Andrew came in at 4-1.  The standings really aren’t changing much and this may come down to the bowl games.  Because I know so many of you care.  This is a somewhat big week for the conference.  There are two marquee non-conference games that the Pac-12 are playing.  BYU against Oregon State isn’t huge in the national eyes but it’s a game that will help decide if the Beavers are worthy of their lofty ranking.  Stanford at Notre Dame is a huge game for the conference and will boost national acclaim if the trees come out with a win.  Inside the conference, USC-Washington is a huge game that will give separation in both the north and south divisions.  UCLA-Utah is another game to keep an eye on as each of those teams try to salvage their seasons.  On to the picks.

Thursday:

ASU at Colorado
The Good Guys:  ASU

Saturday:

California at WSU
The Good Guys:  Cal

UCLA vs. Utah
Matthew:  Utah
Joe, Dan, Andrew:  UCLA

OSU at BYU
The Good Guys:  Oregon State

Stanford at Notre Dame
Andrew:  Stanford
Matthew, Joe, Dan:  Notre Dame

Standings:
Matthew 38-11
Andrew 37-12
Dan 37-12
Joe 37-12

So, Matthew is out to an early lead.  As always, the Husky predictions will come tomorrow night.

Andrew

 

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by | October 10, 2012 · 11:32 pm

Around the Pac-12 – Week 7

Last week brought with it the inaugural mascot melee.  This is week 2 of that, but you’ll have to make it through all of the football games first.  The mascots will be after the jump.  The Pac-12 football teams, on the other hand, will be talked about before the jump.  You can read both, or not.  One will be interesting and ridiculous, while the other will still be somewhat interesting, hopefully, and not so ridiculous.  How’s this for an introduction!  Let’s talk some football.

This Week:  Arizona State (Bye) at Colorado (Bye)

This is the Thursday night game that will be shown on ESPN.  What a barn burner they picked.  Arizona State is a surprise team and could make a run at the South division but count me in as a guy who doesn’t totally buy in to the Sun Devils.  I’m still trying to figure out what a Sun Devil is, to be honest.  This team has a good defense, although I question their secondary.  The offense is a bigger concern.  Colorado is bad.  They won one game by magically beating the Cougars.  They probably won’t win another one, although I wouldn’t be surprised if they kept this one a little bit close.  Arizona State should improve to 5-1 after this game, which is the same record they had last year before they collapsed.  Just saying.

This Week:  California (beat UCLA 43-17) at WSU (lost to OSU 19-6)

Cal went out last week and tried to salvage their season.  They succeeded.  WSU went out last week and tried to salvage their season.  Their defense gave a good effort but they failed.  Cal had looked lost all season before playing UCLA and now it seems that the Golden Bears aren’t as close to teetering off the edge as we thought.  They should be 3-4 after this week and, while that’s not great, aspirations of a bowl are still in tact.  WSU players said that they still think making a bowl is doable this week.  Logically that’s correct.  But, have they watched themselves on tape?  Seriously, that team has a lot of holes.  They might surprise someone this season and I guess this is as good of game as any?  But, no.  It probably won’t happen.

This Week:  Oregon State (beat WSU 19-6) at BYU

The Beavers magic will be tested this week.  That’s not because BYU is a good team.  In fact, I think the Beavers have beaten three teams that are better than BYU already, but it’s because they’ll be without their quarterback, Sean Mannion.  BYU will be a challenging place to play and it will make for an interesting task for new quarterback Cody Vaz.  OSU didn’t look all that impressive against WSU last week but you have to take into account that Sean Mannion was playing on a bad knee all game.  The defense continues to impress.  The Beavers are ranked in the top 10.  How weird is that?

This Week:  Stanford (beat Arizona 54-48) at Notre Dame

The Cardinal played a barn burner on Saturday against Arizona.  It was the exact opposite game that they played against Washington the week before.  I don’t know what to make of the Cardinal.  If they could put it all together, then they’d be a top-15 team but I just don’t see them doing that this year.  Notre Dame is a tall task for Stanford and I don’t expect them to get it done.  I hope they do.  The Pac-12 could use an Oregon State or Stanford victory this week, both would be fantastic.

This Week:  UCLA (lost to Cal 43-17) vs. Utah (lost to USC 28-38)

This could turn in to a really ugly game.  Both of these teams suffered disappointing losses last week.  Utah had USC on the ropes and had some points gifted to them.  They took an early lead only to get dominated in the second half.  It’s been a very disappointing season for the Utes thus far.  I only wrote that sentence so I could use the phrase ‘thus far’.  UCLA played their worst game of the season and, like a true UCLA team, got drilled by an opponent they should have beaten.  Now, they’ll try to regroup.  If they’re a true UCLA team they probably won’t regroup.

Byes this week:  Oregon, Arizona

Oregon is good.  Arizona is probably the best 0-3 conference team in the country but that doesn’t mean they’re good.  The Wildcats let Josh Nunes beat them last week.  Husky fans will laugh at that.  Matt Scott and Ka’deem Carey are on fire right now though.  As a Husky fan, I don’t like that Arizona has a bye the week before they play us.  As a Husky fan, I don’t like Oregon.

I plan to preview the USC-UW game a little more on Friday.  After the jump we move on to the mascot melee on one of the more controversial Olympic sports.  Continue reading →

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by | October 9, 2012 · 7:55 pm

Putting The Ducks To Bed

So, the Good Guys have returned from the depression that was Saturday evening to talk quickly about the game and then move on.  Sark has proved time and against that his team can bounce back after big, ugly losses.  That needs to happen again this week.  Here are two or three paragraphs on the game Saturday night and then we won’t talk about how disgusting it is to lose to Oregon 9 times in a row for at least a couple of months.

Yes, the Huskies were trounced.  They were dominated on the scoreboard but I believe that Sark was right in saying that the score was not indicative of where the two teams are.  The Huskies moved the ball against Oregon better than they have in 4 years.  Really, they rushed for over 200 yards which is only the second time they have done that since 2010.  Now, were the Huskies close to as talented as the Ducks?  No, not even close but the game should have been closer than what it was.

The real important stat of the night was 28 points off of turnovers.  That was what Oregon did to the Huskies.  You simply can’t do that against good teams.  Yes, the Ducks offense still seemed unstoppable but it the Huskies gave them the jump-start that they needed.  Marvin Hall is a freshman and made freshman mistakes.  He has been very solid in the previous 2 games returning the football and he proved to be a game changer.  He was a game changer on Saturday night, just not in the right way.  He’ll have better nights, I promise.  The Ducks did have a few long drives but were also dealt a short field much of the time because of turnovers.  Not to mention, an extra 7 points was gained because of Keith Price.

The team is improving.  It’s hard to say that after a 52-21 loss but you could actually see it last Saturday.  Keith Price isn’t playing at his highest level and the receivers are consistently dropping passes.  The offensive line has improved in the last two weeks by a mile.  There are lanes to run through and there was time to pass on Saturday.  The pressure from the week before was in Price’s head and he rushed things.  He had more time than he thought he had.  Bishop Sankey is on pace for over 1,000 yards.  Did anyone think we’d be saying that 4 weeks ago?  I didn’t think so.  He looks the part.  The defense couldn’t hold Oregon’s offense down in Eugene.  Big whoop.  No one else can.  The team got better last week and didn’t have the show to score for it because of turnovers.  I don’t think the turnovers will be a common theme.  That’s it.  Forget about it and move on.  So, let’s go beat USC!

Andrew

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by | October 5, 2012 · 9:37 pm

UW vs. Oregon Predictions (Or Not)

As has become our tradition, there will be no Husky predictions for the game versus Oregon tomorrow.  This is nothing more than a sidestep around an honest prediction, because none of us could truthfully pick Washington to win this game.  When the Huskies regain their footing in this series, we will make predictions.  For now, take our silence as acquiescence to the Ducks domination.

That’s not to say that the Huskies aren’t making some level of progress.  I expect a closer game than we’ve seen recently, although that potentially still means a blowout.  I think the improved speed and simplified scheme of the Husky defense, not to mention Justin Wilcox’s creativity, gives them a chance to limit Oregon in a way that would have been incomprehensible last season.  The Husky offense is the danger here.  While Oregon’s defense is not as physical and pounding as Stanford’s and LSU’s were, it is faster and near the same talent level.  The Huskies must find a couple extra seconds for Keith Price to throw and running lanes for Bishop Sankey to fill.

While Oregon is undefeated and number two in the country, they are somewhat untested.  They demolished Arizona, who is probably not much worse than UW, if at all, but Arizona is a much different team: offensively talented but still seeking identity, with a spotty defense.  It’s unclear exactly what the Huskies are, still, but that’s also true of the Ducks.  An incredibly soft out of conference schedule has left open the potential for a Duck squad waiting to be exposed.  Their offensive line isn’t quite as dominant as usual, and LaMichael James’ departure has left them just a tiny bit short in the dependable playmaking department.  Throw in a freshman quarterback who occasionally makes freshman mistakes, and there’s a chance of something happening here, but the chance is slim.  Oregon is still fast and disciplined and coached by a genius.

It’s common for teams to play the Ducks tight for a half.  The Cougars just did it, and the Dawgs have done it before.  I hope to see more than that this time.  If the Huskies can keep Oregon within arm’s reach into the fourth quarter, I’ll be happy.  There are no moral victories, but sometimes an actual victory takes a few steps, and a competitive game throughout would be the first of those steps.

Go Dawgs.

-Matthew

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