Roundup: Stanford-Oregon week is here

Can’t wait for the biggest game of the week, even though it’s only three days away now? Lucky for you, CBSSports.com has a preview of the Stanford-Oregon game for you to watch. As Jon Wilner of the San Jose Mercury News tells us, Stanford-Oregon is set for a high-stakes showdown.

Here’s an Oregon football practice report from Nov. 3, thanks to Rob Moseley of GoDucks.com fame. Sounds like the Ducks feel a lot more comfortable in their personnel situation leading up to this game against the Card as opposed to last year, when a lot of freshmen were asked to step up.

All right, let’s get into the weekend’s action, which continued Friday night at Oregon State. Doth appeareth as though the swagger is back in Troy after a 31-14 win in Corvallis over the Beavers. These guys were havin’ fun out there, and Bill Plaschke writes that USC did its dammed-est and stifled Oregon State. Also, check out USA Today’s Q&A with Pat Haden – good stuff on the College Football Playoff here.

After the home loss to the Trojans, OSU head man Mike Riley said his team didn’t play as smart as it could have, thus costing the Beavers the game.

The Wildcats earned magic win No. 6 this weekend with a 33-28 triumph in Berkeley over the Golden Bears. Here’s an Arizona Wildcats football report card for the Cal game, courtesy of Daniel Berk at the Arizona Daily Star. In other Wildcat news, I’m sure you saw that Nick Foles tied an NFL record with seven touchdown passes on Sunday in a 49-20 Philadelphia win over the Oakland Raiders – he had more touchdown passes than incomplete passes on the afternoon. Great to see Foles do work, but why’d he have to do it against the silver and black?

It was the closest the Golden Bears had been in a conference game this season, and Cal’s defensive and offensive lines made strides Saturday afternoon in the five-point defeat.

UCLA achieved bowl eligibility Saturday night after taking care of the Buffs. So, sure, UCLA is feeling good after a 45-23 rout of Colorado, but the Bruins must stand out from the crowd to make the Pac-12 title game. Arizona State leads the Bruins, ‘Cats and Trojans by a game in the Pac-12 South.

The Buffs are seeing some progress even though they have lost 13 consecutive Pac-12 games, and Colorado’s attitude is positive despite the bad losses. For starters, the Buffs have made it a game for at least a half two weeks in a row against UCLA and Arizona.

It was a scary weekend for the Forks: Luckily they’re OK, but an airplane mishap put a scare into Todd Graham and his son, Bo (ASU running backs coach). A small plane they were on lost cabin pressure and dropped about 25,000 feet before an emergency landing.

While Nick Foles put up serious numbers on the NFL gridiron, the same couldn’t be said for former Cougar QB Jeff Tuel, who happened to be making his first NFL start against the best defense in football. After the Buffalo Bills’ 23-13 loss to Kansas City, Tuel said, “it’s 100 percent on me.”

Utah women’s basketball has its season opener in four days’ time, and Tony Jones whets our collective appetite for Utes hoops with a feature on Michelle Plouffe emerging from a long shadow. The senior could potentially surpass Kim Smith (the only Utah women’s hooper to have her jersey number hanging from the rafters in the Huntsman Center) as the best player in Utah history.

There are questions as the Huskies enter a November stretch run. Plenty of big games left on the slate: at UCLA, at Oregon State and versus Washington State to close things out after a home date with Colorado this Saturday.

And we should give some props to some conference champions. The Colorado men and Arizona women claimed the Pac-12 cross country titles, while UCLA took home the Pac-12 women's soccer regular-season championship. Here's UCLA's Amanda Cromwell on the Bruins clinching the Pac-12 women's soccer title.