Weekend games filled with upsets

It seems to me that every season has that one weekend where big favorites in the football world take one on the chin and come up on the losing end of their scheduled game. Last weekend was this year’s upset special.

The craziness started Thursday night when the Arizona Wildcats continued their remarkable season by taking it to the heavily favored Oregon Ducks. The Number 2 rated Ducks have been battling injuries and escaped Pullman a couple of weeks back in a very hard fought victory. But last Thursday the Ducks couldn’t overcome what the Wildcats threw at them.

On Friday, Utah State knocked BYU QB Taysom Hill out of the game and defeated the 18th ranked Cougars in Provo. Maybe it wasn’t a huge upset but Hill was having his way with the Aggie defense early in the game.

Saturday was a nightmare to several highly ranked teams. The teams that were victorious were pretty good too. Mississippi State is showing the SEC that it is going to be one of the teams to beat this season when it took out Texas A&M. The Bulldogs are 5-0 on the season while the Aggies fell to 5-1.

The University of Mississippi or Ole Miss came from behind in the fourth quarter to defeat the Alabama Crimson Tide. The Tide was rated Number 3 in the AP poll. Ole Miss is also 5-0 for the season while Alabama is now 4-1. Texas Christian University took care of Oklahoma 37-33. TCU was rated 25 and OU Number 4. TCU is doing its best to work its way to the top of the Big 12 standings.

Northwestern took care of Wisconsin on Saturday. Wisconsin was rated 17th and Northwestern was not rated.

UCLA was upset by Utah in the Rose Bowl Saturday night a week after WSU did the same to Utah in Salt Lake City. Arizona State took care of USC on a Hail Mary to end the game. USC has lost two games this season. Their other loss was to Boston College a couple of weeks ago. That was a very bad loss in comparison to the victory that ASU came up with. However, the ASU loss was a heartbreaker for USC. Oh well!

I was in Cheney on Saturday and watched a wild one. Eastern Washington University defeated Idaho State 56-53. The victory came at a price as QB Vernon Adams was hobbled most of the second half. But he stayed in the game and ran for first downs, threw TD passes and willed the Eagles to victory. Adams was playing on two broken bones in his foot and will be out for 3-6 weeks.

Idaho State is much improved and is making huge strides under the tutelage of former EWU head coach Mike Kramer. It shouldn’t be a surprise as Kramer has a way of turning programs around. ISU will win some games this year with the players that Coach K has recruited. The Eagles definitely are happy they came away with a win.

Now the Eagles will need to regroup with a sophomore QB. Coach Baldwin will surely have Jordan West ready for Southern Utah.

The Eagles have been battling injuries with some key defensive and offensive players but they will need to fight through them because no team that the Eagles will be playing will feel sorry for them. At this time of the season every team has an injury or two that has them concerned. Let’s hope Vernon Adams Jr. heals real soon.

The game that may be the most upsetting is how the WSU game ended late Saturday night. Every fan can blame the kicker but they can also blame the snap. There are a lot of directions that has some blame but it will always go into the record books as a loss, a slug in the gut loss.

I’m not sure we will see the kind of upsetting losses as there was last weekend, but who knows. It is hard to stop anyone in the pass happy world of NCAA football these days. No huddle offenses are here to stay and it is tough to stop the big, fast receivers.

Last weekend proved that it isn’t safe to be the favorite against hungry rivals.