What has surprised you — good or bad — and most changed your opinion over the past month since our midseason check-in?
M.A. Voepel: The Pac-12 race has been pleasantly surprising. Coming into the season, the thought was it could be a Stanford runaway, and that was probably still the case the morning of Jan. 15. But later that day, the then-unranked USC Trojans upset No. 2 Stanford, Utah Utes beat Arizona in a top-15 battle and unranked Washington State topped then-No. 21 Oregon in overtime. It was a signal: Things weren’t just going to be smooth sailing for anyone, including the Cardinal, who’ve since also lost to the Washington Huskies.
Now, Stanford and Utah are tied atop the league, they’re joined by Colorado in the top 16 of Bracketology and six Pac-12 teams are ranked. The regular-season title might be decided Feb. 25 when Stanford and Utah meet in Salt Lake City, but the Cardinal have to face ranked USC, UCLA and Colorado before then. The Utes face just one ranked opponent (Arizona) in their three games before hosting Stanford.
espn.com article