The Best PAC 12 Football Preview

Savor this week, all you Cal football fans out there. Imagine, your Bears are, once again, a national power. They are all of a sudden respectable, the best team west of the Mississippi.These are the same Bears that are usually hanging out in the Pac12 basement.

Rejoice Bear fans. Your heroes are No. 15 in the AP poll. That's right, No. 15.  I'll bet some of you thought you'd never see them in the Top 25 again, let alone the Top 15. But that's not all. Get this. They are the only undefeated team in the Pac12. So outside the conference, particularly back East, they are considered the best team in the Pac12. Amazing! That's why Cloud 9 has been the second home for so many Bear fans lately. It's a rhapsodic return to the glory days of the last decade, when Jeff Tedford was coach and Aaron Rodgers was QB and Cal was a west coach power.

How long will it last? Who knows? My gut says not for long. Let's face it. This not a great team. It won two tough road games by a hair and struggled with two patsies, This is Cinderella waiting for the clock to strike midnight.This is a team pushing itself to the limits, giving maximum effort on every play. So bask in the bliss while you can.


Arizona State (3-1) at Cal (4-0)

This would have been a battle of the unbeatens if the Sun Devils hadn't been nipped 34-31 by Colorado last week. A 4.5 point home favorite, Cal has the edge because it has a faster, tougher defense and is still on the kind of high a team gets from a road win over a perennial powerhouse like Washington. ASU's offense, particularly weak at rushing, will get overwhelmed by the Bear defense. Things are looking up for Cal's subpar offense. In the road win over Mississippi last week, Cal QB Chase Garbers, who didn't look sharp in the first three games, passed for a career-best 357 yards. If he shows that game wasn't a fluke and the offense is blossoming, who knows,  maybe Cal's tenure in the Top 15 may be longer than expected.
Prediction: Cal wins.

UCLA (1-3) at Arizona (2-1)

Everybody will be watching this game with one question on their minds. Was that second half explosion, when the Bruins outscored Washington State 50-14 on the way to a 67-63 comeback road upset, a one-shot thing or a game-changer? Is Bruin QB Dorian Thompson-Robinson really in touch with his inner Tom Brady? Though he has shown flashes of greatness, DTR has basically looked like a giant bust. Though he was sensational against WSU, he was feasting on a miserable pass defense. Arizona's pass defense is even worse, ranked next-to-last nationally. Look for DTR and the Bruins to continue to be an offensive juggernaut. Arizona, a touchdown favorite, is much like WSU, with a high-octane offense and a crappy defense. So this should be another high-scoring affair where offenses stampede over defenses.
Prediction: Most people are picking Arizona but I have a hunch UCLA wins.


Washington State (3-1) at Utah (3-1)

Both are reeling from upsets last week, but the Utes are a stronger, better-balanced team that is more likely to bounce back from a tough loss. They are missing their great RB, Zack Moss, who is nursing a bum shoulder, but they have a rugged defensive line that will push the Cougars around. With QB Anthony Gordon, WSU boasts the best passing offense in the country. But that's it for the positives. The rest of the team is pretty lame. Its defense is especially awful. It was savaged last week by a UCLA offense that previously had been pitiful. WSU will score but, thanks to that rotten defense, Utah, a 4.5 favorite, will score more.
Prediction: Utah wins.


USC{3-1) at Washington (3-1)

This is pretty simple. Led by fledgling QB Matt Fink, USC heads to Seattle where the Huskies hardly ever lose. The inexperience of their QB is the least of their problems. Their rushing game, normally a strength, has vanished. Worse, injuries have weakened the defense. Not only that, Huskies' QB Jacob Eason has been superb. It's David facing Goliath.
Prediction: Washington wins.

Cal Should Beat Ole Miss In Low Scoring Game

How good are the Cal Bears, who jumped into the Top 25 this week at No. 23? As good as the team that knocked off  No. 10 powerhouse Washington in Seattle two weeks ago? Or closer to the flawed team that couldn't polish off a so-so mid major, North Texas, in Berkeley until the fourth quarter last week?


We'll have a better idea of what kind of team thus is after their road battle against Ole Miss this Saturday. Let's face it. Ole Miss isn't much. They are a low level SEC team predicted to finish under .500. But even a bad SEC team can be trouble for most teams outside that tough conference. The Rebels are just 2-1, losing to unimpressive Memphis, then whipping lousy Arkansas before staggering to a 40-29 win over inferior SE Louisiana last week. Ole Miss boasts no stars and gets average quarterbacking from Matt Corral.


Ole Miss is nowhere near as good as the Washington team that Cal beat on the road. The Bears should top this team, but as usual, it won't be easy. Ole Miss doesn't have a potent passing game to challenge Cal's vaunted secondary and the Rebel rush isn't going to put a big dent in the Bears' sturdy defensive front seven. The Rebs won't score much but neither will Cal, which is weighed down by a weak offense that averages a paltry 159 yards passing per game and rarely converts third downs. It's a big deal if the Bears score score more than 24, so it should be a low-scoring game. That kind of game is often decided by a turnover, which\ favors the Bears, who conquered the crippling turnover habit that plagued them last season. Fumbles, though,  have haunted Ole Miss this year.


Look for Cal, bolstered by some effective power running, to come out on top in a close one.



Predictions:

UCLA, off to an embarrassing 0-5 start last season, is well on its way to duplicating that misery this season. They are 0-3 and will be 0-4 after this weekend. They are in Pullman about to get crushed by Washington State, a 19-point favorite. The Bruins, who give up 279 passing yards per game, are about to become the latest victims of red-hot Cougar QB Anthony Gordon who, leading the nation's best passing attack, has passed for at least 420 yards in each of WSU's three wins. The hapless Bruins don't have a chance in this one.


Ranked No. 10, Utah, arguably the best team in the Pac 12, is a 3.5 favorite to beat USC at the Coliseum Friday night. Utah's ace in the hole is a monster offensive line which hasn't given up a sack this season and opens huge holes for RB Zack Moss, the best runner in the league. This is a team that rarely makes mistakes. So far, in three wins, they have only one turnover, while SC, this season, has eleven. They have had one common opponent, BYU. USC  lost to the Cougars in OT last week while Utah had no trouble with them, winning 30-12. Utah has never won at the Coliseum. That eight-game losing streak ends Friday night.

Cal Goes To 3-0

  

Cal, 3-0.  Looks great, doesn't it? But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

The Bears are 2-0 right now and lounging on Cloud 9 after pulling off the biggest upset of the season, whipping Washington 20-19, in Seattle. But the Bears still have to beat North Texas, though that shouldn't be too difficult.  Cal is a 14 point favorite to beat, in Berkeley, this mid-major team that is 1-1 and reeling from a 49-27 pounding, on the road, by a so-so SMU team. True, North Texas has an explosive offense that averages 39 points and nearly 500 yards a game but their defense is a joke, surrendering, in just two games, 80 points and 959 yards, ranking a pitiful No .123 nationally in scoring defense.

The key to this game is the Cal defense, regarded as one of the nation's best. The jewel of the defense is the secondary, which will smother and punish the North Texas receivers. But these receivers won't be getting many accurate passes from QB Mason Fine, because he'll be too busy trying to escape the lethal Cal pass rush.

The Cal defense will severely restrict the North Texas point total, which is essential to a win since the Cal offense, even against a lousy defense, won't run wild. The Bear offense is very conservative, counting mostly on the rushing of power back Chris Brown and scatback Marcel Dancy. QB Chase Garbers has limited skills so the Bears won't pile up a lot of passing yardage or TD passes, which is the way teams usually engineer routs.

So, unless the Bear defense scores a lot of points or sets up a bunch of easy TDs, this isn't likely to be a runaway. But it should be a win and a boost to 3-0. Even better, depending on how the teams at the bottom of the Top 25 fare, the Bears might even sneak into the Top 25.

Predictions:

Stanford (1-1),  on the road against No. 17 Central Florida (2-0) , gets starting QB KJ Costello back but that doesn't mean victory. UCF has its own QB problems but, as a 7.5 home favorite, should handle Stanford. Last week SC's inexperienced freshman QB Kendon Slovis looked like Tom Brady while destroying the Cardinal. Stanford should take it on the chin again this week...Washington (1-1) will take out its anger against Cal on poor Hawaii (2-0)...Undefeated Oklahoma will push weak UCLA  to 3-0.