Statistically Speaking: Utah at Oregon State

It's just one mammoth game after another for the Utes, as the team attempts to bulldoze their way through the first part of the schedule and put together a record that will be difficult for opponents to top.

How good is good enough? It depends on a huge range of factors and the results of dozens of football games, but Utah has the opportunity to more or less lock down the division by the end of the month.

Think of the path to a title as the delta of a river, splitting into more and more slender streams as it approaches the ocean—a branch for each conference game remaining. As each game is played, the slender streams are blocked off and the probabilities flow towards a handful of ever-more-likely final destinations.

Utah's win over USC drained nearly every stream that had USC winning the championship. Utah's win against the Sun Devils gave them the tiebreaker and a one game lead, although Arizona State still has hope. That hope will dwindle to almost nothing if Utah can beat Oregon State and then UCLA in consecutive weeks.

If those events come to pass, Utah will have only four games left and be heavily favored in two of them. A 7-2 conference record isn't quite the floor, but it would take an epic implosion to get under that mark. UCLA and USC would both be out of the running, and ASU would need to win all five of their remaining games (ESPN FPI gives that an 11% chance) to hang onto their one loss record and squeak out the division.

In that context, this innocuous seeming out-of-division matchup against Oregon State looms suddenly large. If the Utes can pull this one out, UCLA becomes the last major branch in the growing stream of probability pushing the University of Utah towards Las Vegas... and possibly Pasadena. So, are they going to win?

Utah's statistical profile has bounced back close to preseason expectations, mostly thanks to the exceptional quarterback play of Cam Rising, who is performing at a top 10 level right now nationwide. It's a gamble if that will continue, and the Utes will need to be able to find a way to score plenty of points, as the Beavers have an exceptional offensive line and top-10 run game this year.

Utah will get it done Saturday, but it's going to be a true shootout in Corvallis.

Utah 45, Oregon State 41