USC put the finishing touches on one of the best one-year turnarounds in Pac-12 history, and Washington and Kalen DeBoer weren’t too far behind.

And 2022 also saw the rebirth of Arizona, the continued regression of Stanford and Cal, and the bottoming out of Colorado.

All in all, it was one wild regular campaign.

But for now, as we await the conference title game and bowl bids, here’s 1 takeaway from every team the regular season …

Arizona: Task for 2023 — tighten up defense

By the end of the 2022 campaign, the Arizona offense finally had the balance that Jedd Fisch sought all season.

In a season-ending 38-35 Territorial Cup win over Arizona State, the Wildcats gained 480 yards of total offense, including 280 on the ground and 200 through the air. An offense that earlier this year relied almost exclusively on Jayden de Laura throwing to his talented cast of wideouts finally looked like an offense that had weapons all over the field and at every level.

The play of running back Michael Wiley alone was enough to get ‘Cats fans excited, particularly Friday, as he gained 214 rushing yards on 12 carries with three touchdowns while adding three receptions for 51 yards.

But Arizona’s improved offense was only half its 2022 story, and the regression of an already bad defense was the bigger story.

Fisch has one major task in 2023: Find some reinforcements and a more actionable scheme for a defense that ranked 11th in the conference in both scoring and total defense this year.

Arizona’s scariest stat of the season: It allowed nine opponents to score 28 or more points.

Arizona State: Can Kenny Dillingham remove the stink of a floundering program?

It would be one thing if the Arizona State football team simply had a bad season.

But after an investigation into its recruiting practices, jettisoning half the coaching staff, losing several players to the transfer portal, and then the early-season firing of its head coach, the program isn’t just in need of a reboot, it’s in need of a complete hardware replacement.

Is local boy Kenny Dillingham the man to get the Sun Devils back to respectability?

We know he can call a good offense and coach up retreads — Bo Nix would not have been half of what he was this season without Dillingham’s tutelage.

But the new youngest head coach in college football has a tough road ahead of him. Unfortunately for ASU, the greater Phoenix area is not exactly a recruiting hotbed.

He’ll need to hit the transfer portal exceedingly hard to make up for a collapse in high school recruiting.

Cal: Bears struggle not to play down to opponents’ level

Was there a team in the country that appears more affected by the lingering effects of COVID than Cal?

Before 2020, the Bears were on the upswing under Justin Wilcox, improving from five wins in his first season in 2017 to seven wins a year later and eight wins in 2019, with a second-place finish in the Pac-12 North and a win in the Redbox Bowl.

In 2020, the Bears managed to play just four games because of the pandemic, with three games canceled. Last year, Cal went just 5-7, with one-score losses to Nevada, TCU, Washington, Oregon, and Arizona.

This season, the Bears have been just as bad in close games. Cal went 2-5 in one-score games in 2022 to go along with three blowouts.

Strangely enough, the Bears’ best games came in losses to USC (six-point loss) and UCLA (seven-point loss).

Colorado: Buffaloes need a complete teardown, rebuild

Some first-year FBS coaches next year will inherit programs with cupboards relatively stocked and recruiting still salvageable.

Whoever gets the Colorado coaching gig — and that’s looking like it may be Deion Sanders, which is absurd — won’t have quite those creature comforts.

He’ll be lucky if he gets the keys to a personal bathroom.

The Buffaloes are bereft of talent, barren in terms of on-campus support and resources, and quite simply offer one of the worst jobs in all of college football. The once-proud Buffs are a shadow of their former selves, and it showed on the field this year. It’d be nice to highlight even one strength of this football team. There was none.

Good luck to whoever gets the gig.

Oregon: Dan Lanning will regret Bo Nix’s injury for a long time

Bo Nix was fantastic with his arm in the Ducks’ 38-34 regular season-ending loss to Oregon State on Saturday. He completed 27-of-41 passes for 327 yards and 2 scores and was sacked just once, for just the third time this season.

But a look at his rushing numbers will tell you that Nix has been nowhere near his best the past two weeks. After injuring his ankle late in a 37-37 loss to Washington on Nov. 12, Nix has a combined five rushes for a loss of 8 yards. Before that, he’d been averaging more than 50 yards on the ground, with 14 rushing touchdowns.

He’s just been a different player without his mobility, and it presents a real what-if scenario for Dan Lanning and the Ducks.

Did Oregon become too reliant on Nix’s running ability and put him in harm’s way? The Ducks went just 1-2 in their final three regular-season games, all against ranked opponents.

Oregon State: Beavers surge to 7-1 finish on the year, look scary for 2023

If all Oregon State did this year was find a way to beat Oregon, that would’ve been a successful season.

Instead, the Beavers won nine regular-season games for the first time since 2012 and have a shot at their first season with double-digit wins since 2006.

And they did it with a backfield featuring a backup quarterback and a true freshman running back for much of the year. Now, Ben Gulbranson wasn’t perfect — and he was far from it on Saturday, completing just 6-of-13 passes for 60 yards and two interceptions — but he helped architect three key fourth-quarter drives that resulted in 21 points as the Beavers came back from a 17-point deficit to shock the Ducks.

For Jonathan Smith, this season must have been a revelation. He can compete with the Ducks even when they’re near their best.

Stanford: We’ll miss David Shaw

The fun is over for David Shaw up in Palo Alto. One of my favorite coaches in all of college football decided to resign after 12 seasons and a program-record 96 wins as the Cardinal head coach.

“I am not burnt out,” he told reporters late Saturday night. “I’m healthy; I feel good. But 16 years is a long time. … 16 years of running a program, 16 years of being responsible for everything and everybody catches up to you.”

If I’m Shaw, I’m looking to follow a graceful exit to another role in the department.

UCLA: Bruins must shore up pass defense to take step forward

In many important ways, the UCLA defense was improved from last year.

The pass rush took a step forward. The consistency was better. And, yes, the pass defense was marginally upped.

But if the Bruins want to contend for Pac-12 titles — or, at least, one more Pac-12 title before absconding to the Big Ten — it will need to drastically improve its defense. Heck, if it wants to keep pace with city rival USC, it’ll need to.

UCLA loses some impressive veterans, but you’ve got to question how impressive they really were, given the Bruins’ difficulties on defense the last half-decade. Sure, finding a way to replace Dorian Thompson-Robinson and Zach Charbonnet is clearly the most important offensive task, but Chip Kelly needs to mine the transfer portal for top-flight talent on both sides of the ball.

USC: Lincoln Riley era starts off with a bang

Raise your hand if you saw Riley and the new-look Trojans winning 11 regular-season games and battling for the Pac-12 title in Las Vegas in his very 1st season, coming off a 4-8 campaign?

I thought the Trojans were due for maybe eight or nine wins, with an outside shot at double-digit dubs, but Riley far exceeded my expectations and proved able to adapt to key situations at key times. The season-ending loss of starters didn’t derail the train, chunk defensive yardage didn’t slow them down, not even a myriad of nicks and bruises that cost them several important players for long stretches could ultimately knock USC off its course.

Riley and Co. aren’t done yet, though.

Should they win the Pac-12 title on Friday in a rematch with the Utes — who dealt them their lone loss of the year, and by one point, at that — USC will likely end up in the College Football Playoff. Now that’s an achievement.

Utah: Utes survive big losses, lack of playmakers for another big year

When all is said and done, the Utes are back in the Pac-12 title game and can get to double-figure wins with a second win this season over USC on Friday in Las Vegas.

Considering how banged up Utah has been, that’s a real accomplishment.

Forget what Dalton Kincaid has turned into — the Utes lost the league’s top tight end when Brant Kuithe went down with a knee injury. Tavion Thomas was unable to recapture his 2021 magic for a variety of reasons. And Cameron Rising wasn’t always 100 percent.

Yet Kyle Whittingham and the Utes regularly found ways to win, proving the strength and consistency of the program. Question is: Can Whittingham bring in the skill position talent through the transfer portal to give the Utes an offensive boost?

Washington: Kalen DeBoer turned the Huskies into a force in a hurry

All due respect to Lincoln Riley and USC and Dan Lanning at Oregon, but the best coaching debut this season was up in Seattle.

What Kalen DeBoer did with a 4-8 Huskies squad that didn’t exactly have an overabundance of transfer talent is remarkable.

It’s not exactly as if 50 teams were clamoring over Michael Penix Jr., who had the game of his life in the Apple Cup with 519 yards of total offense and five touchdowns. He finishes the regular season with more than 4,300 passing yards and 33 total touchdowns. Ryan Grubb certainly lived up to the preseason hype.

If they can talk Penix into staying one more season, the Huskies are going to be an absolute force next year.

Washington State: Cougars, Cam Ward miss the mark by just a bit

It’s fair to say that Cameron Ward needs another year of seasoning.

Ward finished with fewer than half as many touchdowns as he had last year at Incarnate Word, and while, yes, the competition was much greater in the Pac-12, Ward’s inconsistency at times was maddening. For the year, Ward completed 287-of-465 passing for 3,904 yards and 23 touchdowns with just 8 picks, but he had five games when he finished with one passing touchdown.

Look, reaching seven wins in Jake Dickert’s first full-time season at the helm is impressive, but it feels like the Cougars could’ve done more. They lost to Oregon by three, put up just 41 combined points in back-to-back-to-back losses to USC, Oregon State and Utah and faded down the stretch against the Huskies in the Apple Cup.

If the Cougars can shore up an offensive line that allowed 40 sacks this season — and if Ward returns and thrives — Wazzu could contend for eight or nine wins.