[Papa John]

Stanford is currently 7-5 and in seventh place, but in the loss column the Cardinal is only two games behind UCLA, Oregon and WSU and one game behind USC and Washington. A fourth place finish and first-round bye in the conference tournament still feels like a bridge too far, but that could change if Stanford somehow manages to knock off the Bruins. In fact, I was surprised to learn that Stanford has a four-game home winning streak versus UCLA, albeit last season's home OT win was in Santa Cruz.

UW and Wazzu have both played baby-soft conference schedules up to this point. 5 of each of their 7 conference wins were to the bottom 4 conference teams, and the other 2 were Colorado and Stanford (both teams also have a loss to Colorado and Stanford, btw). They have yet to beat the top 4 teams in conference, and have to play said teams in 5 of their final 9/10 games (UW gets UCLA twice, Wazzu gets Oregon twice), and still have to play each other twice too. I would be more impressed/worried if either of them actually had a good conference win. Maybe the most impressive was Wazzu taking Colorado behind the woodshed at home, but that's really it.

Point is, getting to 5th in conference is actually much more doable than it may appear. 4th is probably a stretch unless we win @ Oregon.

Most likely IMO is getting 5th-ish in conference and losing the first round tournament game, as we seem to do every year.

Good points, SamuelMcF. Tonight's game isn't a must win, but it feels like Stanford needs to win each of its games versus the teams below it in the standings--@ OSU, vs Utah, vs Colorado, at Cal, at ASU--and win at least one of the games versus the teams above it--vs UCLA, @ Oregon, @ Arizona. A 6-2 finish would put Stanford at 13-7 and in the running for 4th place. So maybe the game at Oregon is more important than tonight's game, because we would have season sweeps over both Oregon and USC, and even with a win tonight we're probably not going to chase down UCLA by season's end. In any case, I was thinking of Arizona, UCLA, USC and Oregon as the most likely top four, not UW and WSU, so thanks for clarifying that.

And having typed the above, it still feels like a bridge too far.

[Papa John]

Stanford is currently 7-5 and in seventh place, but in the loss column the Cardinal is only two games behind UCLA, Oregon and WSU and one game behind USC and Washington. A fourth place finish and first-round bye in the conference tournament still feels like a bridge too far, but that could change if Stanford somehow manages to knock off the Bruins. In fact, I was surprised to learn that Stanford has a four-game home winning streak versus UCLA, albeit last season's home OT win was in Santa Cruz.

UW and Wazzu have both played baby-soft conference schedules up to this point. 5 of each of their 7 conference wins were to the bottom 4 conference teams, and the other 2 were Colorado and Stanford (both teams also have a loss to Colorado and Stanford, btw). They have yet to beat the top 4 teams in conference, and have to play said teams in 5 of their final 9/10 games (UW gets UCLA twice, Wazzu gets Oregon twice), and still have to play each other twice too. I would be more impressed/worried if either of them actually had a good conference win. Maybe the most impressive was Wazzu taking Colorado behind the woodshed at home, but that's really it.

Point is, getting to 5th in conference is actually much more doable than it may appear. 4th is probably a stretch unless we win @ Oregon.

Most likely IMO is getting 5th-ish in conference and losing the first round tournament game, as we seem to do every year.

Good points, SamuelMcF. Tonight's game isn't a must win, but it feels like Stanford needs to win each of its games versus the teams below it in the standings--@ OSU, vs Utah, vs Colorado, at Cal, at ASU--and win at least one of the games versus the teams above it--vs UCLA, @ Oregon, @ Arizona. A 6-2 finish would put Stanford at 13-7 and in the running for 4th place. So maybe the game at Oregon is more important than tonight's game, because we would have season sweeps over both Oregon and USC, and even with a win tonight we're probably not going to chase down UCLA by season's end. In any case, I was thinking of Arizona, UCLA, USC and Oregon as the most likely top four, not UW and WSU, so thanks for clarifying that.

And having typed the above, it still feels like a bridge too far.