Pac-12 Roundup: Week 2
College football season is coming into form. The Pac-12 played its first official (and first unofficial) game last weekend. Utah and Colorado were both welcomed to the conference with losses from USC and Cal. New ground is being broken by the old Pac as well. Washington State has emerged from the Pac-10 basement and outscored its first two opponents by nearly 100 points. Meanwhile, Oregon State is floundering, having lost to an FCS school, and then getting blown away in Madison.
Here’s a look back at all the highlights from week 2 in this week’s Pac-12 Roundup:
Best Win: This has to go to the ASU Sun Devils who beat a ranked opponent for the first time since 2007. In my Pac-12 preview piece, I noted that The Sun Devils were on a 1-13 streak against ranked teams, but predicted that would end under Junior QB Brock Osweiller.
Osweiller only started the final game of last season, but showed an innate combination of charisma and composure that I expected would end ASU’s longstanding culture of underachievement.
Sure enough, Osweiller took it upon himself to make sure the Devils knew that games like Saturday’s against #21 Missouri were the kind of games A-State was going to start winning.
Osweiller was brilliant in only his 3rd start throwing 24/32 for 353 yards and 3 touchdowns with 0 INT. That was great, but more importantly, the way his teammates rallied around him was evidence that this Sun Devil team may be gelling into something special.
Honorable mention here to USC for winning the Pac-12’s official inaugural game over Utah, and to Paul Wulff’s Washington State team who just laid a beatdown on UNLV that Wisconsin would be proud of to get to 2-0 for the first time since 2005.
Worst Loss: This should probably go to Oregon State who was shutout by Wisconsin, but they wore “worst loss” last week, so we’ll give it to Arizona who got smacked around in Stillwater. Oklahoma State was ranked #9 going into the game, so there’s no great shame in losing, but Arizona needs to at least be competitive in games like this. The Cats beat #9 Iowa last year and #11 Oregon the year before. Fans in the desert should expect more than they got on Saturday.
When Mike Stoops took over in Arizona, the Wildcats program was a smoldering wreckage. Within 5 years he lifted AZ from 2-10 territory to 8-5, but he has clearly plateaued and it appears he may have taken the program as high as far as he can.
Nick Foles is probably the 2nd best QB in the Pac and threw for nearly 400 yards against the Cowboys without his #1 receiver (Juron Criner, out for an appendectomy), but those 400 yards were primarily between the 20s. With no running game to speak of, the Cats sputter in the red zone. Foles threw only 1 TD, and the Cats leading rusher Keola Antolin had only 22 yards.
Combine that with the Cats defense surrendering nearly 600 yards of total offense, and you have a total disaster. Ok-state is tough competition, but this blowout loss has people questioning if it’s time for the Stoops era to end in Tucson.
Player of the Week: If we gave it to Robert Woods for 177 receiving yards last week, how could we not give it to Colorado WR Paul Richardson for beating
Woods by over 100 yards!? The Buffs lost to Cal in OT (considering they lost to the bears by 45 points last year, losing in OT ain’t so bad), but Richardson’s 11 catches for an astounding 284 yards helped the Buffs to outgain Cal by more than 200 yards 582-370. It was an incredible performance and served as a shot across the bow to the Pac-12 that CU may not be a walkover this season.
Honorable mention to Oregon QB Darron Thomas who managed to throw 6 TD passes on 19 completions and Washington LB Cort Dennison who had 12 tackles in the Huskies’ win over Hawai’i.
Adventures in Quarterback Change: UCLA won at home against San Jose State while continuing to get steady numbers from Richard Brehaut. The Bruins’ run-heavy offense doesn’t put a lot of pressure on the quarterback, and neither does San Jose State. Brehaut has looked ok since replacing QB Kevin Prince who left UCLA’s game @ Houston with a concussion. San Jose State and Conference USA teams are not known for their defense so UCLA may be headed for QB issues down the road, but so far, so good.
Washington State was looking forward to the continued progression of Junior QB Jeff Tuel this season, but Tuel broke his collarbone in the Cougs’ first game and was replaced by Marshall Lobbestael. All the backup did was pass for 361 yards and 5 TDs in WSU’s blowout of UNLV. The Rebs aren’t known for defense any more than SJSU, but in Pullman, they’ll take 2-0.
Things are not as rosy in Corvallis as the OSU Beaves dropped to 0-2 and the benching of Ryan Katz continues. Katz was benched in the 2nd quarter of OSU’s loss to Sacramento State after a middling performance, and was benched again in Madison completing 2/3 for 17 yards.
His replacement, freshman Sean Mannion, is not exactly blowing anyone’s doors off, throwing for 244 yards and no touchdowns against the Badgers. It’s hard to say what Mike Riley is thinking with the constant QB rotation, but so far, it doesn’t look good. The Beavers have a bye this weekend and hopefully will use it to get the quarterback position locked down.
This week’s Pac-12 slate features Colorado and Utah playing their in-state rivals in Colorado State and BYU, Washington’s rubber-match with Nebraska (the teams split two games last season) and Texas’ first trip to the Rose Bowl since beating USC for the BCS Championship. Enjoy the games, and we’ll see you on next week’s Pac-12 Roundup!