Weekly Six Pac: Buffalo Extinction

After a week away for vacation, we’re back with the six stories from around the conference that I found the most interesting this week.

1. Everyone agreed that Coach Prime would take the Colorado football team on a roller coaster ride, but I doubt many anticipated the highs and lows the program would feel before every playing an official game for him. On the positive side, Colorado packed its stadium for the spring game this weekend. They have dynamic players in Travis Hunter and Shedeur Sanders, the likes of whom haven’t been seen in Boulder in several football generations. There are also drawbacks to the high-churn method of roster building. Just since that game, at least 15 players have entered the transfer portal, including arguably the game’s biggest standout, Montana Lemonious-Craig.

2. UCLA softball running away with the Pac-12. The Bruins looked like the class of a very competitive conference at the start of the season, but they have lapped the field and now sit four games ahead of second-place UW. The Bruins extended that lead over the weekend with a dominant sweep of a mediocre Arizona State squad. Megan Faraimo has been the Bruins’ pitching star this year and she notched her nation-leading 24th win on Sunday’s senior day.

3. Willie Bloomquist’s Arizona State’s baseball team has been surging near the top of the conference. They beat Oregon State with a walk-off grand slam and then won another game after coming back from a 5-0 deficit over the weekend. The wins put the Sun Devils at 27-12 (13-4 in conference), a half-game ahead of Stanford in the Pac-12 standings, and #12 in the country in Baseball America’s rankings.

4. In a story that seems more likely to come from The Onion, the B1G is not only bringing USC and UCLA away from the Pac-12, they’re bringing some of the conference’s referees with them. The #Pac12Refs discussion has been a joke for the better part of a decade, which makes it hard to imagine why the FCS would want to hire them, let alone a conference with even greater means.

5. While the Dawgs played their spring game in Seattle, the Cougs had their version across the state. The Crimson vs. Gray game was a more traditional scrimmage than the offense vs. defense version the Dawgs used. Not surprisingly, the offensive led by the first-team QB surged to a straightforward win. Cam Ward looked comfortable with his new OC. By spring game rules, the success of the offense must also mean doom and gloom for the defense, so look out for some major regression from last year’s stand-out unit.

6. The Weekly Six Pac loves to take pride in the non-revenue sports that bestowed the Conference of Champions moniker on the Pac-12. Therefore, I won’t miss an opportunity to congratulate Cal on a trip to the rugby national championship game. The Bears beat BYU decisively in the semifinal. After a 19-19 tie at halftime, Cal rallied to a 55-31 win. Cal will get a rematch with Navy, who beat them earlier in the year, in the national championship game two weeks from now in Houston. Good luck, you Bears.