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Remember the Aztecs? The last time the Beavers played Eastern Washington and San Diego State in the same season, it ended pretty well. Of course, it started a little differently.
Speaking of San Diego State, there's a lot of familiarity between the Aztec coaching staff and Oregon State. Rocky Long, their head coach, was the Beavers' defensive coordinator between 1991 and 1995. San Diego State beat writer Stefanie Loh answers 5 questions about the Aztecs.
Sean Mannion won the Manning Award Player of the Week, which is a fan-voted award for best QB performance. There must have been some sort of grass roots campaign that I somehow completely missed, because Mannion had 992 votes, which is more than every other QB combined. It is interesting to note that this was the one pre-season watch list he was on due to their strictly statistical based qualifications. With regards to other awards, I'm guessing he'll be added mid-season to certain watch lists if he keeps up his current performance. I doubt he'll win any of them unless the Beavers finish 12-1, but it's still nice to see.
Ken Goe would like to remind us that Oregon State is still 2-1, with a real shot at 6-1, which most of us kind of figured was likely to happen anyway.
From the Pac-12 blog: Diagnosing the teams with issues, a.k.a. the teams with losses. Ted also reports that one thing that Mike Riley absolutely did right this year was pick the right QB. The Pac-12 blog also predicts the outcome of all the Pac-12 games this week.
Injury news: Gavin Andrews and Grant Enger are confirmed out for the San Diego State game. Storm Woods is feeling the love after his injury last weekend. All indications are that he is fine, but will still likely be sitting out Saturday's game as part of standard concussion procedures.
DJ Alexander is glad to be back in the lineup. The guy who filled in for him, Jabral Johnson, impressed the coaches enough while he was back there that he is now filling in for the injured Michael Doctor.
Mike Riley remembers Qualcomm Stadium pretty well -- he coached the San Diego Chargers there from 1999 to 2001.
Athlon Sports has some cool stats from Week 3 of the Pac-12. Notable amongst these: Oregon State is a perfect 18-for-18 in the red zone in terms of scoring opportunities this year. While there are still 22 teams that are perfect, Oregon State has the most. Of less good news: Washington State leads the nation in pass defense so far. Not sure how much of that is due to WSU being good at it and how much due to their opponents not throwing a lot, but OSU had better get their running game in shape between now and October 12th.
The Pac-12's official website also has a stat pack for Week 4 with some interesting minutiae.
The OSU Athletic Department put together a neat video of last week's Top 10 plays, with Mike Parker's play-by-play instead of that of Joey Harrington and the other guy from Fox Sports 1.
A bit of background on OSU's new band director, Dana Biggs.
Today's unrelated short feels like a video game to me, but is very real and very cool. And might be mildly nauseating and/or terrifying if you're afraid of heights.
As always, be sure to vote in the poll below, and leave anything I missed in the comments below. Go Beavs!