Washington defies the pundits again with thrilling Pac-12 title victory over Oregon

Last night, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton Huskies stayed unde­feat­ed and won the final grid­iron cham­pi­onship game of the Pac-12 era. In pre­vail­ing over the Ore­gon Ducks, the Huskies defied the world of sports pun­dit­ry, which had reached the erro­neous con­sen­sus that the Ducks were the team to beat.

“Ten points [the point spread Ore­gon was favored by] was ridicu­lous,” said Wash­ing­ton’s Ede­fuan Ulo­fos­hio after the game. “We just kept our heads down and worked. We knew how good we were. There was nev­er a doubt. Even when we were los­ing, there was nev­er a doubt we were going to come back and win.”

“There has to be a deep belief with­in your team that you can win,” Huskies head coach Kalen DeBoer told The Wash­ing­ton Post’s Jer­ry Brew­er ahead of the game. “A lot of peo­ple will say, ‘Oh, we’re going to go dom­i­nate,’ and then they get beat by 30. What hap­pened to teams with that mind-set? Well, is there real­ly a deep belief that you have? I know that the staff I have around me and the amaz­ing play­ers have that because I know who they are, their tal­ent and their character.”

We don’t cov­er sports much here on the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate, but there’s a les­son in Wash­ing­ton’s vic­to­ry that is applic­a­ble to pol­i­tics as well as oth­er fields like busi­ness and tech­nol­o­gy: pre­dic­tions are easy to make and easy to get wrong.

Wash­ing­ton’s thrilling win in Las Vegas was a result that a lot of com­men­ta­tors just could­n’t see com­ing. Quite a few sports­writ­ers and pun­dits who offered a pre­dic­tion for the game were wrong, as we’ll see in a moment. Some pun­dits thought Ore­gon would win by a lot, while oth­ers thought it would be closer.

But very few pre­dict­ed a Wash­ing­ton vic­to­ry, or even hedged their bets. They assigned lit­tle val­ue or no val­ue to Wash­ing­ton’s grit and resourcefulness.

Jon Wilner, who is per­haps the most pro­lif­ic, wide­ly read, and knowl­edge­able Pac-12 sports­writer we have, was heav­i­ly invest­ed in an Ore­gon vic­to­ry. Wilner ranked Ore­gon above Wash­ing­ton in his most recent pow­er rank­ings, even though Wash­ing­ton beat Ore­gon and every oth­er team it played dur­ing the reg­u­lar sea­son, and then argued that the Ducks would take home the title:

Wash­ing­ton vs. Oregon
Kick­off: 5 p.m. on ABC
Line: Ore­gon ‑9.5 (total: 66.5)

The case for Wash­ing­ton is a three-point head-to-head vic­to­ry six weeks ago. The case for Ore­gon is (almost) every­thing else.

Wilner did make space for fac­tors favor­ing the Huskies in his analy­sis, con­ced­ing: “The Huskies have played close games week upon week and are steeled to the pres­sure of exe­cut­ing under make-or-break cir­cum­stances. No team in the coun­try has been more resource­ful. […] If Fri­day night’s affair is tight in the fourth quar­ter, UW will have a deep well of expe­ri­ence upon which to draw — includ­ing two har­row­ing wins over Ore­gon in the past 55 weeks.”

“That can­not be overlooked.”

Nev­er­the­less, Wilner picked the Ducks to win, and he was wrong.

And he was far from the only one.

Here’s Michael Brig­gs:

Ore­gon’s defense will be the dif­fer­ence in this game, as it will pres­sure Penix (32 sacks) often and make it chal­leng­ing for the Huskies to move the chains (25th in oppo­nent third-down con­ver­sion per­cent­age). It has been espe­cial­ly stout against the run, which should make UW too one-dimensional.

Nix will pick apart Wash­ing­ton’s 124th-ranked pass defense, cement­ing his Heis­man lega­cy. This is Ore­gon’s game to win, and it will get the job done with a con­vinc­ing revenge victory.

Pre­dic­tion: Ore­gon ‑9.5

Wrong. In real­i­ty, Wash­ing­ton was­n’t too one-dimen­sion­al, the game was not Ore­gon’s to win, and it did not get the job done. The Ducks did not put togeth­er a “con­vinc­ing revenge vic­to­ry.” As coach Dan Lan­ning said repeat­ed­ly in his postgame remarks, Ore­gon was­n’t able to finish.

Here’s Joe Tansey for Bleach­er Report:

Ore­gon 34, Wash­ing­ton 27

Ore­gon played the more con­sis­tent foot­ball since the first meet­ing with Washington.

The Ducks should be favored in Las Vegas despite being fur­ther down the rank­ings than the Huskies.

Wash­ing­ton should enter Alle­giant Sta­di­um in a CFB Play­off posi­tion, one that Ore­gon can take with a victory.

Ore­gon’s defense can be trust­ed more to get stops against Penix, and this time around, it needs to make sure there is a larg­er gap in the fourth quar­ter so that the Huskies can’t pro­duce more fourth-quar­ter heroics.

Wrong. It was actu­al­ly the Huskies who went into the final min­utes with a lead, rather than the Ducks. When time expired, it was the Huskies who had made sure the Ducks could­n’t pro­duce any last sec­ond hero­ics, not the oth­er way around.

ESPN amus­ing­ly assessed Ore­gon as hav­ing a 75.8% chance of winning:

ESP­N’s Foot­ball Pow­er Index (FPI) puts Ore­gon as the third-best team in the coun­try at a 25.6 rat­ing. Wash­ing­ton, at a 16.8, is 13th in the FBS and sec­ond in the Pac-12. That rat­ing dif­fer­ence is big­ger than the gap from Wash­ing­ton in sec­ond to Utah in sixth when it comes to Pac-12 teams. Unlike their first matchup, the two teams will play at a neu­tral site, giv­ing Ore­gon the edge here.

It did­n’t mat­ter that the teams were play­ing at a neu­tral site: Wash­ing­ton still won. Kalen DeBoer’s tal­ent­ed and ener­getic squad beat Ore­gon at Autzen last year, beat Ore­gon at home on Mont­lake this year, and now it has beat­en Ore­gon at a neu­tral site. It seems Wash­ing­ton’s actu­al recent per­for­mance against Ore­gon both away and at home just was­n’t a fac­tor in ESP­N’s assessment.

Here’s Rob Miech:

In mid-Octo­ber, the game between these two had six lead changes, the Huskies tak­ing the final one with 98 ticks left. They com­bined for 956 total yards of offense, there was a sin­gle turnover and penal­ties were low. In a grand neu­tral site, this rematch is poet­ic, the vic­tor like­ly advanc­ing to the nation­al play­offs. A plus for the Ducks is their 9–2‑1 ATS record, a mea­sure of dom­i­nance; UW is 5–6‑1. Final­ly, Ore­gon is 15–4 in the past 19 between these two, with the Ducks’ aver­age win­ning mar­gin being a sliv­er more than 15 points.

Pick: Ore­gon

This pre­dic­tion refresh­ing­ly relied more on data and the his­tor­i­cal record than some of the oth­er just excerpt­ed. How­ev­er, the pick was still wrong.

Here’s Ayr­ton Ost­ly of USA Today Sports:

Ore­gon 35, Wash­ing­ton 28

The first matchup between these two teams was one of the best games of the 2023 col­lege foot­ball sea­son. Ore­gon’s improved since that close loss while Wash­ing­ton’s eked out mul­ti­ple close wins. In a game of high-pow­ered offens­es, the Ducks’ defense makes the dif­fer­ence at a neu­tral site.

Wrong. Once again, the words “neu­tral site” were used to jus­ti­fy pick­ing the Ducks. It clear­ly mat­tered not to the Huskies that the game was in Las Vegas.

You might think that at least The Seat­tle Times would have made the case for the unde­feat­ed Huskies, but nope, they also went with the pack and picked Oregon:

Vorel’s pre­dic­tion

For eight con­sec­u­tive weeks, Wash­ing­ton has won by 10 points or few­er — con­tin­u­ous­ly, con­sis­tent­ly find­ing a way. But it hasn’t always been pret­ty, with the Huskies’ offense and defense trad­ing spurts of frus­trat­ing incon­sis­ten­cy. Mean­while, Ore­gon has erupt­ed since falling to the Huskies on Oct. 14, bom­bard­ing its last six oppo­nents by an aver­age of 26 points. At this point, the Ducks are sim­ply play­ing bet­ter. And while Penix and Odun­ze will make their plays, and the Huskies will rise to the chal­lenge, Oregon’s offense will sus­tain dri­ves and grad­u­al­ly enforce their will. UW coach Kalen DeBoer has repeat­ed­ly said his team plays its best under the bright lights … and he’s right. But against an Ore­gon unit fir­ing on all cylin­ders, the Huskies’ best won’t quite cut it. UW will suf­fer its first defeat of the sea­son, like­ly falling out of the Col­lege Foot­ball Play­off (and into the Fies­ta Bowl).

Final score: Ducks 37, Huskies 34

Wrong. The Huskies’ best effort did cut it. They’re the Pac-12 cham­pi­ons and they are head­ed to the Col­lege Foot­ball Play­off. Vorel is sure­ly hap­py to be wrong, but why’d he make this pre­dic­tion to begin with? He cov­ers the Huskies for Wash­ing­ton’s news­pa­per of record, so he knows them bet­ter than any­body and has seen them pre­vail again and again when many com­men­ta­tors thought they would­n’t. Yet he still did­n’t envi­sion them win­ning this game.

Because pre­dic­tions are so easy to make and so easy to get wrong, as I wrote above, NPI refus­es to offer any. We will dis­cuss prob­a­bil­i­ties based on the avail­able data, but only with the stat­ed caveat that we don’t know the future. Unlike oth­ers, we do not con­sid­er pre­dic­tions to be harm­less fun because they can neg­a­tive­ly influ­ence and dom­i­nate pub­lic dis­course. We believe in being open-mind­ed and being will­ing to con­sid­er dif­fer­ent pos­si­bil­i­ties and scenarios.

We think pun­dits of all sorts would ben­e­fit from adopt­ing such a mindset.