Pac-10 Notebook For 10-12-2006 - College Football News And Picks

Pac-10 Notebook For 10-12-2006
By Jeff Zell
Posted: 4:00 am PDT 2006-10-12

The USC Trojans squeaked out another win, 26-20, over an improving Washington Huskies team. Huskies QB Isaiah Stanback couldn't down the ball fast enough to get a play off after he completed a pass all the way down to the USC 15.

The Trojans have now won 29 consecutive games at The Coliseum. USC's competition coming to Los Angeles gets exponentially tougher the rest of the season. Three ranked teams: California, Oregon and Notre Dame are still scheduled to play at USC.

Pete Carroll says the problem with the Trojans is they're not creating turnovers or sacking the quarterback. The Trojans rank 91st in the nation in sacks with 1.40 per game and have a 9:5 takeaway-to-giveaway ratio.

"We are not going to stop emphasizing it in practice, but until we make those things happen, games are going to be close," Carroll told the Associated Press.

USC is expected to get star WR Dwayne Jarrett back for Saturday's game vs. Arizona State.

Bears Ball On: Jeff Tedford's California Bears keep on winning. This past week they rolled Oregon 45-24, but all everyone is talking about is the Bears' opening loss to Tennessee. "I've said it a million times: At Tennessee, anything that could have went wrong did, but that wasn't really us out there," Tedford told the Associated Press. "I knew what our kids were capable of, and we're coming together very, very well." His kids are capable of putting up lots of offense and lots of points. California is 11th in the nation in total offense and fifth in scoring offense.

Ben-less Bruins: UCLA may have handily defeated Arizona, 27-7, but it came at a cost. The Bruins lost 23-year-old sophomore QB Ben Olson for 4-6 weeks after he tore his medial collateral muscle in the first quarter. The injury came at the toughest part of the UCLA schedule. The next three games the Bruins play Oregon, Notre Dame and California, three ranked opponents.

A Look Ahead: Arizona State has had two weeks to think about their past two losses to California and Oregon. They've also had two weeks to prepare for USC (the Trojans are -19 at WagerWeb.com). California plays at Washington State (Bears -8.5) in an attempt to score 40-plus points for the sixth straight game. Washington tries to bounce back from its narrow defeat against USC with a game against Oregon State (UW -9.5). Oregon heads back home against UCLA (Ducks -10), and Arizona and Stanford (Wildcats -3.5) battle for their first conference win.

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