EUGENE

-- Oregon athletic director Rob Mullens isn't worried whether Duck fans will flock to Levi's Stadium on Friday night, site of the Pac-12's football championship game.

And after two consecutive losses to Arizona, Ducks head coach Mark Helfrich senses his team is ready to show up, too, with a conference title and berth in the College Football Playoff both on the line.

"Our guys are in a great place right now mentally and psychologically and now they'll be excited,"

, one day after his third-ranked Ducks

in program history and cruised past rival Oregon State, 47-19, in Corvallis.

The win is Oregon's seventh straight on the season and in the Civil War and sets up a rematch with the

Wildcats (10-2, 7-2 Pac-12), victors of the conference's South Division in head coach Rich Rodriguez's third season.

With Arizona handing Oregon its only loss this season back on Oct. 2, the game offers a set of tidy, ready-made story lines for all involved.

Can linebacker Scooby Wright, he of 140 tackles and an

FBS

-leading 28 tackles for loss, disrupt Oregon's offense again after he forced the game-ending fumble before?

"That guy's a stud, he's one of my favorite guys to watch in our conference," said Helfrich, who is 22-1 against teams not from Tucson in his career. "Unfortunately, when he's playing against us or we're looking forward to playing against him, we have to handle the business end of him."

Is the prospect of delivering some revenge against the Wildcats too great for Oregon's "faceless opponent" mantra to hold this week?

"Whatever you can use to channel preparation," Helfrich said, "we'll take it."

And can playing one another again cause each team to psyche itself out?

"It's kind of that, well, they know that we know that they know that we know," he said. "So let's do the opposite kind of a deal."

These are the stories that familiarity breed.

Too bad, then, that in the last eight weeks the Ducks and Wildcats have transformed while still operating around the same key pieces, carving out different identities and forging new attitudes as they've run toward titles in their respective divisions.

For Oregon, its once-decimated offensive line — an Achilles' heel against Arizona by allowing five sacks -- is now largely intact and certainly more confident with the returns of Jake Fisher, Andre Yruretagoyena and Matt Pierson.

Though they could miss injured center Hroniss Grasu, named the team's top offensive lineman Sunday at the team banquet, there is a cohesion that was lacking in October.

And Arizona had shed its image as the scrappy 21-point underdog who stunned the Ducks in their own stadium. Their freshman duo of quarterback Anu Solomon and running back Nick Wilson are no longer viewed as untested youngsters due for a rude awakening in conference play.

They've combined for 43 touchdowns.

"Your team is so different almost on a weekly basis and certainly this many months literally removed from that game we're different, they're different," Helfrich said. "There's a couple guys that were in recently that were out, there were a couple guys who didn't play as much as they did earlier in the season, obviously that's a similar situation with us, guys growing and developing in their roles, guys either aren't healthy or get healthy. So many variables to that that create the weekly existence."

Kick off Friday is 6 p.m. at Levi's, the home of the

NFL'

s San Francisco 49ers that Oregon has already won at in late October against California.

Mullens, Oregon's athletic director, said Sunday that that game, which also was held on a Friday night at the brand-new stadium, was something of a dry run for how the UO fan base might travel for the conference title.

The Ducks drew well then and Oregon "blew through" its 3,500-ticket allotment for the title game since, with fans now buying directly through the conference or stadium.

"When you look across the Pac-12, we probably travel as well as anybody," Mullens said. "We certainly hear that from our peers when we show up and we sense that when we're in the venues."

This is the first year of the conference hosting its championship game at a neutral site, ending a three-year run where the team with the better record hosted. The Ducks hosted the first-ever title game in 2011 at Autzen Stadium and would have done so again this season if not for a three-year agreement to host in Santa Clara, which is just north of San Jose.

"I'd love to have it at Autzen now that we'd be hosting," Mullens said, earning a grin from Helfrich, who sat next to him. "If we were ever going to try a neutral site this was probably the right place and the right time. We've got a couple years under our belt, a brand new stadium, a partner in the 49ers who built a beautiful stadium and who will help market it and it's as centrally located as you can get in the West. If we were ever going to try it, this was the time and place and it'll be an interesting barometer."

And it will be a most interesting gauge of each team, too, with Friday night likely to be decided by the team whose strengths have endured all season, yet whose transformation has turned past weaknesses into December difference-makers.

-- Andrew Greif | @andrewgreif