I have a hard time tooting my own horn on my prediction abilities when I so drastically underestimated Washington.  Two things I need to remember in the future:

• Other teams have bad weeks too (Wash vs. OSU) that make them look deceptively bad.
• Not all backup QBs are Ayoob.

Nevertheless, I did still predict 4 of the 5 winners and was correct in being hesitent in the 5th pick.

As for the shape of the Pac-10, it just officially became a 2 horse race.  Oregon’s loss to WSU pulls them back into the middle of the group.  Now, not only are Cal and USC the only conference undefeated teams, they’re the only ones without 2 losses.  Additionally, with the exception of USC vs. Oregon, both Cal and USC have played all of the more difficult teams in the Pac-10 (WSU, Oregon, Washington and ASU).

For the rest of the Pac, WSU is looking to be the team to beat for 3rd place.  They’ve only lost to Cal and USC (and having put up respectible struggles).  The three teams likely to challenge them for that spot are Oregon, which just lost to them, Washington and ASU.  ASU is still the wild card of those 4 teams as they’ve only played the best of the league (USC, Cal, Oregon) and the worst (Stanford).  I suspect they’ll beat Arizona and OSU but their games against the Washington teams will define their season.

UCLA could in theory bring itself up into the above group but since they have yet to play Cal or USC, I think they’ll fall below most of them.  They seem to be about equal with OSU.  Finally the bottom of the Pac is still Arizona and Stanford.

Here are my final projected standings:

1. Cal 9-0
2. USC 8-1
3. WSU 7-2
4. Oregon 6-3 (loses to USC)
5. Washington 4-5 (loses to WSU and Oregon)
6. ASU 4-5 (loses to UW and WSU)
7. UCLA 3-6 (loses to USC, Cal, WSU and ASU)
8. OSU 3-6 (loses to USC, ASU, UCLA and Oregon)
9. UA 1-8 (doesn’t win again)
10. Stanford 0-9 (finishes 0-12 for first time in history)

There are a lot of interesting matchups yet, but I think the list helps define which matchups are likely to affect the final standings.  From my predictions of it, the Pac-10 will have 6 bowl eligible teams.  If UCLA could have pulled the upset on Saturday against ND and OSU had been able to beat Boise St., the number could have been as high as 8.

In any case, here are my updated metrics:

• MVD: 13.9 (even from last week with new scores of 25, 12, 8, 16, 7)
• TPD: 12.9 (down from 13.1 with new scores of 11, 18, 6, 14, 7)
• Winning percentage: 83.7 (down slightly from 84.1 after going 4-1 again)

Tune in later in the week for updated predictions.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 22nd, 2006 at 10:50 am and is filed under Sports, Sports - Cal Football. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.