Ballsy call, Mr. Riley (Image via Wikipedia)

Only one of the conference’s three games today ended up being close, but it was exciting enough to make up for the two blow-outs that went down in Los Angeles and Pullman. In one of the guttiest calls we’ve seen this season, Oregon State head coach Mike Riley opted to go for two while down by one in double overtime at Washington. Beaver quarterback Ryan Katz had time, had a man, made a pretty decent throw, but the ball slipped through the receiver’s hands and gave Washington the one-point win. But enough written play-by-play. You should just watch the clip.

And with that, Oregon State falls to 3-3, Washington improves to 3-3, Boise State’s strength of schedule weakened, and the PAC-10 got even crazier. The lesson to be learned from the action in Washington is that both the Huskies and the Beavers can upset any team in the conference this year. Oregon and Stanford are the big dogs, but either could lose to UW or OSU.

Even after a beautiful performance last week against UCLA, Cal got thumped by USC. So add the Golden Bears to the rapidly growing list of teams that are so inconsistent that they’re nearly impossible to assess. Arizona might also belong on that roll call with Cal, after the men of Tucson only put up 24 points against conference swamp-dweller Washington State while losing star quarterback Nick Foles. With each week of football in the PAC-10, we figure out that no one knows anything other than the fact that Oregon is really good and Washington State is really bad. Here are your scores from around the conference.

• Washington def. Oregon State, 35-34 (2 OT).
  • We predicted this week and in the preseason that Oregon State would win
• USC def. California, 48-14
  • We predicted this week that California would win, and we predicted in the preseason that USC would win
• Arizona def. Washington State, 24-7
  • We predicted this week and in the preseason that Arizona would win
    

• Our Record This Week: 1-2
• Our Record This Season: 32-12 (.727)
  

Related Posts:

• Predicting Stanford-Oregon State (2010)
• PAC-10 Power Rankings Redux
• PAC-10 Picks Week 7