Pac-12 Roundup: Week 3
It was another big weekend in the Pac-12 with ten games in the conference. USC’s offense finally kicked into high gear, UCLA looked as lousy as ever, and the two best QBs in the conference faced-off. Let’s wrap up the excitement of week 3 in this week’s Pac-12 Roundup.
BIGGEST WIN: Cal and Oregon played 1-AA teams, five other teams lost and Colorado played hapless Colorado State. So that narrows our list down quite a bit.
Stanford didn’t have any trouble in the Desert with Arizona, beating up on a Wildcat team continuing its bid to become the first team to finish a season without a single net positive rushing yard. Good luck Cats!
USC looked real flashy beating up on Syracuse, which sounds good until you remember that Syracuse needed overtime just to beat Wake Forest two weeks ago.
The best win of the week must belong to UTAH. The Utes have been listening to BYU brag all off-season about all the exposure they were going to get on ESPN this season. Well, the Cougars were certainly exposed on ESPN on Saturday night. Utah left no doubt about who rules the Beehive State in a 54-10 beat down of their archrival Cougars.
The BYU-Utah game is the biggest sporting event of the year in the state of Utah and has been decided by one score or less in 12 of the last 14 years. This game is almost always a dogfight, so this year’s 44-point margin is remarkable. Utah forced 7 BYU turnovers (well, to be fair, BYU didn’t need much forcing on some of them) and blew up what was a very even recent history in a rivalry series that had split 3 of the last 6 and 6 of the previous 12.
Doing it in Provo with BYU’s former Offensive Coordinator, Norm Chow calling plays for the Utes just made it all the sweeter. Congratulations, to the Utes.
WORST LOSS: Let’s hear it for the Oregon State Beavers who avoid mention in this category for the first time by virtue of a Bye week. The Beavers are resting up for their September 24th matchup with UCLA.
Speaking of UCLA, would a 49-20 crushing in your home stadium by a very average looking Texas team qualify as the worst loss of the week? Would it help if the losing team’s starting quarterback threw 3 interceptions in the first quarter?
I say yes.
Kevin Prince’s final numbers: 3/7 26 yards and 3 INT. That’s an equal number of completions to each team, folks. Not easy! Richard Brehaut was again steady but far from thrilling.
UCLA travels to Corvallis next week for what promises to be the worst Pac-12 game of the year. Expect four quarterbacks to play, and expect each one to be more depressing to watch than the last. The good news is, the loser of this game will be relegated to the Big East and its place in the Pac-12 will be assumed by Oklahoma.
PLAYER OF THE WEEK: The first two weeks of the season, we’ve had a Pac-12 WR go nuts and take this award. First Robert Woods caught 17 balls against Minnesota, and then Colorado’s Paul Richardson had 284 receiving yards against Cal.
This week, Washington State’s superb sophomore WR, Marques Wilson had 239 receiving yards on six catches! That’s 40 yards per catch!! Sadly, all these crazy numbers are becoming desensitizing. 239 yards is amazing, and Marques is a phenomenal talent, but 40 yards per catch says as much about the ineptitude of SDSU’s secondary as it does abut Wilson’s ability.
So we’ll change things up a bit and give this week’s POW to a defensive player. As mentioned above, Utah’s defense had a huge week against archrival BYU, holding the Cougars to 10 points and forcing seven turnovers. Sophomore linebacker Trevor Reilly (who according to his bio on Utah’s athletic web site , won the World Onion eating Championship in 2004 when he would have been only 16) had 5 tackles against the Cougars, including 3 for loss of a combined 35 yards.
Even bigger than that, Reilly finished with an incredible 3 forced fumbles, all of which were recovered by the Utes (no word on how many onions he ate in post-game celebration). It was a demolition of the Cougars that Utah fans will remember for decades and Reilly was the biggest difference-maker. Congratulations to Trevor Reilly for the win and becoming our first Player of the Week on the defensive side of the ball.
Finally, we give out the YOU MAY HAVE WON THE BATTLE, BUT WE RUINED YOUR ONCE-IN-A-GENERATION-SEASON AWARD. No Surprise, that this one goes to the ARIZONA WILDCATS who for the second time in recent memory have sabotaged a special season by a team threatening to give the Pac-12 national legitimacy beyond USC. Thanks Arizona! Last time, it was Oregon who lost probable Heisman winner Dennis Dixon for the season in a win over the Wildcats and had their National Championship hopes dashed.
This year the Cats out-did themselves knocking StanfordLB Shayne Skov, WR Chris Owusu, and TE Coby Fleener out with injury. Skov was the Brian
Urlacher of the Pac-12. A phenomenal linebacker respected as much for his leadership as he was for his stellar play. Owusu and Fleener were Stanford’s top returning receivers. Obviously none of those individuals are as critical as Dennis Dixon was to the ’07 Ducks on their own, but they are Stanford’s three best players who do not line up behind center, and without them, the Cardinal’s BCS Title hopes are history.
Skov is gone for the year and it’s hard to imagine Stanford’s defense without him. Owusu and Fleener’s status isn’t public yet, but Stanford is heading into a bye week so there is optimism they will be back as Andrew Luck’s favorite targets before the Cardinal takes the field again. The Cardinal has the longest win-streak in the FBS now that Auburn has lost, here’s hoping they can run it a bit longer.
Next week, Pac-12 battles start in earnest with four intra-conference games including USC’s visit to the Valley of the Sun that will likely determine the winner of the South Division. Colorado’s tough schedule continues with a trip to Columbus to play Ohio State, and UCLA visits Corvallis trying to avoid relegation (though wouldn’t UCLA’s basketball history be a great fit in the Big East?). Enjoy week 4 everybody!
(Thanks to Alix Drawec for UCLA photo. See more of Alix’s work at alixdrawec.photoshelter.com)