Oregon Football: 3 takeaways from road loss at Arizona

3. One of these two teams is still in the Pac-12 hunt, and it isn’t Oregon

Oregon had a chance to stay on pace with Washington and Stanford and a game behind Washington State in the Pac-12 North race. Instead, the loss put the Ducks two games behind the Cougars. When the head-to-head loss in Pullman is taken into account, Mario Cristobal’s team would need to run the table from here and see Washington State lose three times in their final four conference games to go to Santa Clara for the Pac-12 title game.

Things are far more open in the Pac-12 South. While Utah now holds sole possession of the South lead after losses by USC and Colorado in Week 9. But those losses by the Trojans and Buffaloes also allowed Arizona to move back up into a tie with those two teams just a game behind Utah.

When you get down to it, neither of these teams is probably going to come through to win the Pac-12 this season. But at this point the Wildcats are in far better position to pull off the surprise if the opportunity were to arise.

More critically, though, the win gives Arizona a legitimate chance to get to six wins and reach the postseason in Sumlin’s first year at the helm. Oregon will also get their sixth win sooner or later, but they are no longer relevant on either the conference or national level as anything other than a spoiler.