Jacob Thorpe’s Week 8 Pac-12 Picks

PULLMAN – Halfway through the season the Pac-12 picker is … exactly even. That’s right, we’re sitting at .500 with our picks and so things could be a lot worse. They could also be a lot better.

Honestly, you could flip a coin and have just as good a shot of getting a game right as reading this column. But you’d only have three-quarters as much fun.

Here are my random throws at a dartboard for this week.

Oregon at California, Cal by 3: A bye week came at the right time for the Ducks, who were beat up and beat down after a solid month of losing.

The pick: UO, 38-31

Colorado at Stanford, Stanford by 2.5: Stanford may have figured some things out while scoring 17 straight points to beat Notre Dame, but Christian McCaffrey is still questionable and Colorado has a stellar defense.

The pick: CU, 35-31

Oregon State at No. 5 Washington, UW by 37: Washington has a top-10 scoring offense and scoring defense. Oregon State has a third-string quarterback.

The pick: UW, 58-10

Washington State at Arizona State, WSU by 7.5: The Cougars have not won in Tempe since 2001. They also have not had very many teams as good as the current squad since 2001.

The pick: Will be in Friday’s paper.

No. 19 Utah at UCLA, UCLA by 7: I’m guessing that Utah’s defense won’t take too kindly to the Bruins warming up on their side of the field, either.

The pick: Utah, 20-17

Last week: 4-1 straight up, 3-2 against the spread

Overall: 42-14 straight up, 23-23-2 against the spread