No Heart!

After the game against ASU, I was calling this year's USC team a mediocre team. I didn't get a chance to blog about it, but articulated these thoughts to my Trojan buddies. My prediction that USC would lose 3 games was coming closer to reality. Clearly, this USC team isn't the same type of team we've seen the previous 8 years. After the thrashing Stanford gave us on Saturday, I'm here to say something much worse - This year's team has "no heart".

I hate to say it, but I have to call it as I see it. SC gave up after Barkley's pick 6. There was no fight left in the team...and after the game, a good part of the team ran off the field without shaking hands with the Stanford team. For a team that is supposed to live by the mottoes of "Always Compete" and "Fight On", this was embarrassing.

I personally have been on losing teams. When I played Frosh basketball during high school, my team went winless for the season. Yes, you read that right - WINLESS. But through it all, we always played hard and we played to the best of our abilities. And after the game ended, we always shook hands with our opponents. Being a Trojan and someone who values good sportsmanship, I am ashamed of those players who quit and just ran off the field.

I'm not going to belabor what is wrong with this year's team. There's enough people doing that as the SC blogosphere has been going apeshit since Saturday afternoon. We have 2 weeks to lick our wounds, get somewhat healthy, and prepare for our final 2 games - against UCLA and Arizona. We'll see what this team is made of as neither game is going to be easy given how the entire team has played the last 4 weeks.

Fight On!

SC's Party is Over

I should have stayed on vacation! If I had known SC would be dominated in such a manner, I would have spent an extra day or two in Hong Kong or Guangzhou.

My hat is off to the Oregon Ducks! They came to play and did what SC did when SC was winning national titles. SC's run as the Pac-10 champs and consecutive BCS bowl appearances are over. Granted, there are still games to be played, but I don't see Oregon losing 3 conference games from their remaining schedule to allow SC to sneak into the Rose Bowl. Hell, the way the SC defense was manhandled yesterday, SC is primed to lose another game.

The only positive from yesterday's thrashing was Matt Barkley's play. Yes, he was rattled at times, but that's what happens when you play from behind and you are forced to pass the ball. He did not have the deer in the headlights look and can only grow from this loss.

Now....on to the negatives:

• What happened to the defense? I wasn't able to watch the Notre Dame and Oregon State games while on vacation, but from what I read, the defense was getting progressively worse. The front 4 did what they could, but the linebackers and secondary have to make plays. Again, I ask why is SC playing this soft zone when the secondary is the most experienced group on this team? Would playing some man-to-man defense and trying to stuff the receivers at the line of scrimmage have been so bad? We know that linebackers are young and somewhat inexperienced, but the poor tackling, missed assignments, and over pursuit is inexcusable. This was just BAD!
  
• The running game was okay early on, but then disappeared. I was rather surprised by this. Knowing the Ducks have a high power offense, I thought SC would try more of a ball control offense to eat up the clock and keep the Ducks offense off the field. But that didn't happen, especially when the SC offensive line kept committing all those false start penalties and the Ducks scored almost at will to force SC into pass only mode.
• Big plays given up by both the SC special teams and defense were huge. Again, poor tackling, missed assignments, and over pursuit put us in a hole that we could not recover from.
• Lack of adjustments. I hate to do this, but one has to call out Coach Carroll and the entire coaching staff for this embarrassment. Were any adjustments made at half time? I'd be hard pressed to identify any adjustments SC made from the 1st half to the 2nd half.
  

This truly is a rebuilding year for the SC Trojans. Before the season started, I thought SC had the potential to lose 3 games this season - we lost a ton of players from the defense to the pros, all the tough games were on the road, and we were going to have a 1st year starter at QB - but I still believed we would be competitive. Now it looks like my gut feel was right. That initial loss to Washington hurts even more now.