Washington State picked to finish 5th in the Pac-12 North

There weren't many surprises when the Pac-12 media poll was released on Wednesday. Oregon was picked to finish first in the Pac-12 North and predicted as the Pac-12 champion for the fourth time in five years. Washington State collected 87 votes in the poll, good for fifth place in the Pac-12 North.

The fifth-place prediction is where we thought WSU would be heading in. The Cougars are clearly ahead of California, which is coming off a dismal season. You might be able to argue WSU should be ahead of Oregon State. Media polls, however, are more a reflection of what happened last year rather than a true prediction of next season. If WSU has a great season, the Cougars will be slotted much higher in the poll next year, even though they'd lose Connor Halliday and a few other key pieces.

The Cougars collected 87 points from the 39 ballots which means at least a couple of votes slotted WSU in at least fourth. A first-place vote is worth 6 points, second 5 and so on. All fifth-place votes would yield 78 points, so WSU had to be higher on a couple of ballots. Oregon collected 37 of the 39 first-place votes in the North with Stanford grabbing the other two. UCLA was picked to win the Pac-12 South by a fairly wide margin. Here is a complete look at the voting.

Oregon was the most-popular pick to win the Pac-12 title game with 24 votes. UCLA collected 13 while Stanford and USC were each picked once.