Tag Archives: Oregon State at BYU preview

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 →