Inside the day's key match-ups.

There's always the risk of getting too carried away by the last scene without taking the entire picture into account, but it's hard to classify Stanford's running game at this point as anything but "awesome," despite it being little more than "Toby Gerhart right, Toby Gerhart left, Toby Gerhart in their grill." Even before their breakout efforts against Oregon and USC the last two weeks, the Cardinal were averaging 205 yards on the ground over their 5-3 start; add to that the dominant efforts in 50-plus-point bludgeons of the Ducks (254 yards on 4.9 per carry) and Trojans (325 stunning yards on 6.5 a pop), and Stanford stands alone as the most physically intimidating attack in the country over the stretch run.

On the other side, though, probably no defense in the Pac-10 has been better against the run over the same stretch than Cal: Since being gashed by Oregon and USC in back-to-back losses in their first two league games, the Bears haven't allowed 100 yards on the ground in more than a month -- to a team or individual -- including holding Oregon State and Arizona well below their respective season averages the last two weeks. The best individual back Cal has seen, Jacquizz Rogers, was bottled up for 67 yards on less than three per carry in Berkeley; with a veteran front focusing on Gerhart, the Bears have a decent shot at holding the league's leading rusher around the century mark, if not beneath it for only the third time this year.

The problem with focusing on Gerhart over the second half of the year is the developing of redshirt freshman quarterback Andrew Luck and the emergence of the Cardinal offense as the most balanced attack in the country: For the season, Stanford averages 222 yards per game rushing and 223 passing, with Luck dropping 11 touchdowns to one interception over the last five games en route to establishing himself as the highest-rated passer in the conference. That's a crippling prospect for one of the worst pass defenses in the country: In the process of stuffing the run, Cal allowed at least 280 yards through the air in five of their last eight games, including all three of its losses. The Bears can pick their poison, but they'll have to swallow it either way.