Stanford Has Big Chance to Salvage Season Against UCLA

From preseason Pac-12 contender to hoping for a Holiday Bowl invitation — that’s where the Stanford Cardinal season has dropped as far as expectations go. But the Cardinal can finish the regular season on a high note if — and only if — they take down No. 8 UCLA Friday afternoon in Pasadena (12:30 PT, ABC/ESPN). The Bruins’ only chance of winning the South Division requires a win over the Cardinal. No matter what has happened during Stanford’s supbar season (plenty), head coach David Shaw will be forgiven on The Farm if Stanford beats UCLA.

The news that certified next-level talent WR/PR Ty Montgomery will miss the game does not help Stanford’s case on the field. Junior QB Kevin Hogan has been deflecting talk that he will skip his final year on The Farm because at least one current red-shirt freshman QB has more “tremendous upside potential” (copyright ESPN’s Jay Bilas) than he does. The running game only looked good against a Cal team that has trouble stopping anybody.

Then there’s the team lining up across from the Cardinal at the Rose Bowl. After starting the season ranked seventh in the AP Poll and then dropping all the way out of the top 25, the Bruins have certainly looked deserving of that preseason rank in recent weeks. The 9-2 UCLA is even being touted as a dark-horse candidate for the CFB Playoff (it would require beating an Oregon team that made them look silly in October and lots of other dominoes to fall).

The numbers don’t look good for the Cardinal to pull the upset. Perhaps the weirdest stat is this: entering Saturday, the Cardinal are 6-5, having played five ranked teams and six unranked teams so far this season. Yes, Stanford has beaten every unranked team on the schedule and lost to every ranked team. In each loss, the Cardinal have not scored more than 17 points. The one 17-point game was the double-overtime loss to Utah, where it was 7-7 at the end of regulation. Not a very positive sign going up against ranked team No. 6.

Because of Stanford’s tendency in recent years to come up big when the stakes are the highest, this game cannot be conceded to UCLA. The predictions for the contest from Rant writers (found here, here, and here) give UCLA the win, but not by much. But those outlooks still give UCLA the win and Stanford dropping to 6-6 and 4-5 in conference. That’s one outcome nobody had at the beginning of the year, making even the Holiday Bowl an implausible destination for all the wrong reasons.

Alex Drude is a Pac-12 writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @Alex_Drude. “Like” him on Facebook and add him to your network on Google+.