I'm one of the last people that is going to cite transitive property for football - it's pretty FS far more than 81% of the time.
However, SO FAR this season, Cal's showing to be the best of what we'd consider the dreckfest teams of the conference (Cal, Oregon St, WSU, and Colorado). The conference as a whole basically has Oregon, then a large grouping of average to above average teams that have some kind of serious flaw to them (Stanford, UW, USC, UCLA, Utah, the Arizona schools).
So far, what we've seen from Cal is that they have played a few teams in the second tier of the conference. They should have beat Arizona and the UCLA game could have been a coin flip. UCLA has shown themselves to be behind what I'd consider the top end of the conference by how they got smashed by Oregon (just like everybody else is right now) and how they've struggled in games where they've been hit in the mouth (see Utah). Moreover, they've shown themselves to be very sloppy and have been lucky to pull out wins at Cal and Colorado. UW is far closer to Utah in quality IMO than Cal/Colorado - both have very good defenses, want to run the ball (w/ Shaq at RB that's in the same range of Booker for Utah), both have questionable at times QB play, and Utah an advantage in the kicking game. With the single exception of the ASU game, I'm not sure UCLA has played an impressive game all year. The game last night against Arizona probably qualifies as their best game of the year outside of ASU ... and that was an extremely sloppy game. At this point, I think you conclude that UCLA is a talented team that isn't particularly well coached, plays very sloppy and unfocused at times.
Regarding Arizona, what we know is that they want to play with a lot of tempo. I don't think that Soloman is a guy that is going to hurt you much with his down the field throws. So it comes down to controlling the running game and the short to intermediate passing game. The Arizona OL looks like it is turning into a massive problem for them as well. And, on defense, when they've struggled this year, they've struggled to contain the downhill running game in the 3-3-5. Shaq's got an ability to really cause them problems.
Point being that after yesterday there's a path to seeing this team having a successful end of the season. Each of these remaining games are winnable. The UW Defense is a Top 5 unit (when looking at offense, defense, and special teams units) in the conference. Expecting that they will play well should be expected against the teams that remain.
Moreover, for anybody with additional doubts, we've seen 2 very solid weeks in a row regarding culture change. Against ASU, there's no way that this team last year responds to being down 10-0 with the way that game was going. Yet, they get it back tied. Then against Colorado, we play like shit early and get down 10 earlier (2x) and respond. Moreover, this is a coaching staff that is showing halftime adjustments that are working - particularly defensively. In every PAC game so far this year w/ the exception of Cal where we only gave up 7 in the 2nd half, the defense has given up less points in the 2nd half than they did in the 1st half. As we continue to play close games the rest of the season, this is a positive to look at.