Pac-12 Rankings and Projections After Week 9

There is some debate about whether UW should have been slotted higher than #5 in the CFP rankings. Had they not had narrow wins over both Arizona State and Stanford, there might not be any room for debate. But #5 is also where UW is ranked in both the AP and Coaches polls, so there is some consistency.

Pac-12 Rankings

UW is also #5 in the Massey Composite Ranking. Here is a look at the ‘Cool Chart’ which shows where all of the Pac-12 are ranked in that ranking and how the rankings have changed over the course of the season.

Of note, one team ahead of UW in the Composite Ranking that is behind them in the CFP rankings is Texas. Georgia is #8 in the Composite Ranking while #2 in the CFP ranking.

The two Arizona schools have been moving up recently. Arizona is poised to possibly break into the top 25 if it can beat UCLA this weekend. They are at #34 now. Arizona State is now up to #87. They have some tough games ahead (at Utah, at UCLA, and home against Oregon and then Arizona). If they can get a win or two in that stretch they should continue to move up.

Not surprisingly, after 4 straight losses WSU continues to drop. They had been a top 20 team, and still have some good wins (Wisconsin and Oregon State). They have 3 winnable games coming up before the Apple Cup (Stanford, Cal, and Colorado). Now the question for them is if they can become bowl-eligible.

It is a little surprising that USC got a bump up after just barely beating Cal. They have 3 ranked teams in the final games which will decide their direction.

Above I mentioned that UW’s ranking is consistent between the Composite Ranking, the CFP, the AP, and the Coaches poll. It isn’t just UW which has a consistent ranking. Here’s a look at how all of the Pac-12 teams are ranked in several different rankings.

Included in the table are the major polls, the Composite Ranking, CBS Sport’s ranking of all 133 teams, plus the SRS ranking.

There aren’t a lot of significant differences between the rankings. SRS does rank some of the Pac-12 teams lower, especially Utah. But otherwise most teams are within a couple of places between the different rankings.

Advanced Stats

The advanced statistics for a team looks at how well they’ve played; how efficient they are on both offense and defense (and, in some cases, special teams). Here is a comparison of different advanced stats for the Pac-12 teams.

Here you see a lot of differences compared to the Composite Rankings, although they all have the same top 7 teams-just in a different order. This shows that Oregon is playing as well as just about any team in the country. UW has dropped in the advanced stats after its last two games. From this it could be argued that Cal may be a better team than their record indicates since a couple of the advanced stats rankings have them above WSU. It could be a good game between them in a week and a half.

The table above shows the offense rankings for the Pac-12 from the F+ rankings. There are some changes week-to-week, but most of the rankings are consistent. The two exceptions appear to be Arizona State and Cal. Both of their offenses have improved over the last few weeks. That shouldn’t be surprising to fans following those teams since changes were made on the offense for both since the beginning of the year (new play caller for Arizona State and new QB for Cal).

Not a lot of change for most teams in the defensive F+ rankings. Both UW and Utah dropped a little after both teams gave up of 30 points last week. USC has also dropped after giving up almost 50 points to Cal. WSU has dropped over the last 2 (really 3) weeks after giving up 38 or more points in their last 3 games. UCLA, Utah, and Oregon are the only teams now with a top-20 defense.

Win Projections for Week 10

Here’s a look at the win projections from both ESPN’s FPI and Massey for the Pac-12 games this weekend.

The only game where there isn’t the same favorite is the UW-USC game. That isn’t too surprising since both have the game as close to a toss-up. Based on the way that Arizona State has been playing, and how Utah played in its last game, I’m a little surprised that the win percentage for Utah isn’t lower.

Here’s a comparison between the win projections from ESPN’s FPI in the preseason with where the teams are now (current wins in []).

• Arizona: 5.6 [5]
• Arizona State: 5.0 [2]
• California: 5.7 [3]
• Colorado: 2.8 [4]
• Oregon: 8.9 [7]
• Oregon State: 8.6 [6]
• Stanford: 4.3 [2]
• UCLA: 7.5 [6]
• USC: 10.0 [7]
• Utah: 8.5 [6]
• Washington: 7.7 [8]
• WSU: 5.6 [4]

UW and Colorado are two teams that have already exceeded their projected wins. Arizona is very likely to exceed theirs, along with Oregon-since they are favored in all of their remaining games. UCLA and WSU should also exceed theirs since they each need 2 more wins in their final 4 games. Arizona State, California, and Stanford probably won’t since they’d need to win 3 of their final 4 games. USC would have to win out to match theirs. It could go either way for Oregon State and Utah at this point.