Raise your hand if, at the start of the season, you thought that the Oct. 31 matchup between Stanford and Washington State would determine control of the Pac-12 North.

If your hand is up, please put it down and go take a timeout. It’s not nice to lie to people.

Although Stanford will be a double-digit favorite against Washington State on Saturday, the Cougars have shown the ability to play spoiler this season, looked downright dangerous at times this year and will be playing in front of a spirited crowd turning out for the team’s biggest home game of the year.

This means that a dangerous trap will loom on Saturday when the No. 8 Cardinal (6-1, 5-0 Pac-12) travel to Pullman, Washington to take on the upstart Cougars (5-2, 3-1) in a Halloween night matchup that promises plenty of offensive fireworks, if recent weeks have been any indication.

“Our approach hasn’t changed since after Northwestern,” said head coach David Shaw. “We’ve got a crazy schedule, this is a crazy conference. In order for us to win, we need to play our best every week. You can’t ever be surprised by someone beating somebody else.

“The bottom line is that we’ve got to show up Saturday night ready to play our best football. It takes your best game to beat someone.”

Even though College GameDay spurned Pullman in favor of Philadelphia for Temple-Notre Dame this week, the importance of Saturday’s game cannot be understated for both sides. For Washington State, it will be an opportunity to continue its recent surge with a monumental upset and make itself impossible to ignore, while a win for Stanford would effectively lock up the Pac-12 North title barring any insanity down the road.

Football hasn’t been this exciting in Pullman for a while, and when the Cardinal arrive in the small city in southeastern Washington, Cougars head coach Mike Leach has promised an environment with enthusiasm “on a scale with Woodstock.”

Cougars fans have good reason to be thrilled about this season, too.

Since Washington State was dealt a soul-crushing loss in its season opener against FCS opponent Portland State, the Cougars have bounced back in a huge way, including a shocking upset win over Oregon and a solid victory over Arizona that have left them in the copilot’s seat for control of the North.

Although longtime quarterback Connor Halliday graduated after last season, sophomore signal-caller Luke Falk has run the Air Raid system to perfection in his first full year at the helm, and some of the numbers that he’s put up have been frankly mind-boggling: Washington State leads the conference in passing yards (as is custom) with 415 per game on average, and Falk has thrown 26 touchdowns against just 4 interceptions.

“He’s tall, he’s got great vision, he’s got a quick release, he’s very accurate,” Shaw said. “He’s more athletic than I thought when I watched him. He moves well in the pocket, he can take off and scramble for first downs, he keeps his eyes down the field, he’s a tough kid.”

But Washington State has always been great at passing the ball — that’s nothing new. The difference this year has been the emergence of a running game to keep defenses honest, which has been the glaring weakness of the team in years past.

In fact, although Washington State is dead last in the conference in rushing for the fourth straight year, 2015 also marks the first season under Leach in which the Cougars are averaging over 53 yards on the ground per game, with 91 yards per game so far this year.

The Cougars are actually coming off three straight 100-yard rushing performances and have won each of those three games — against Oregon, Oregon State and Arizona, no less. Seeing as how they have averaged 47.3 points per game during that streak, it’s safe to say that Washington State is playing the best football it has in some time now.

“They’re playing better; they’re just playing well,” Shaw said. “The quarterback’s playing at a high level, they’re protecting him better than they have in the past, they’re running the ball more than they have in the past, they’ve got a really good runner that’s really shifty and can make some really good plays as a runner.”

“They’re going to throw the ball a lot, and then when you’re in full pass-rush mode, they’re going to hit you with the stretch play,” added senior defensive end Aziz Shittu. “That’s something we’re focusing on this week — stopping the run, making them one-dimensional.”

For Stanford on defense, it’s going to be about playing as soundly as possible and avoiding any lapses in coverage, because given the lack of pass rush Stanford has had this year, Falk will be poised to find and exploit any openings he finds. And given that Stanford expects the Cougars to throw 40-50 times in the game, the opportunities for mistakes are numerous.

Luckily for the Cardinal, the secondary has really gotten more than its share of big-game experience this season against the varied offenses of the Pac-12, and Shaw believes that the young defensive backs will be ready to step up against the Cougars’ numerous skill players.

“We’ve played a lot of defensive backs this past year in this first half of the season,” he said. “Even a lot of our young guys have gotten some significant time on the field. If it turns into one of those games where they throw 50-something times, we can rotate our guys knowing they all have some experience and hopefully they can hold up against these guys.”

On the other side of the ball, although the Cougars’ secondary has done an admirable job of limiting opposing passers and creating turnovers (it has 6 interceptions to just 12 touchdowns allowed through the air this year), the run defense has been shaky at best, which is something Stanford will be keen to exploit on Saturday.

With sophomore running back Christian McCaffrey coming off a third straight 300-yard game and the offensive line playing better than it ever has, Stanford shouldn’t have a terribly difficult time running the ball on a defense that is last in the conference in yards per attempt (5.06) and has already yielded five 170-yard rushing games this season.

The conditions might favor the running game, anyway — the forecast says that the teams will likely see rain on their Halloween night matchup, meaning that gripping and catching the ball will be more difficult for quarterbacks and receivers.

For those reasons, expect this game to be a high-scoring affair on both sides — and really, on a spooky Halloween night against a coach that may or may not be a pirate, it wouldn’t be bad for Stanford to expect the unexpected.

Unexpected or not, Stanford is going to take a red-hot Washington State’s best shot, and it will be up to the Cardinal to answer the call and maintain their positive momentum heading into the home stretch of the season.

“We’re on the road in a tough environment in some rain and cooler weather,” Shaw said. “Can we still play at a high level? That’s just our next challenge.”

Contact Do-Hyoung Park at dhpark ‘at’ stanford.edu.