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.

Beating Up the Cal 'Gummy' Bears

The way this game played out was entirely unexpected....as evidenced by the score!



I was sure that Cal would be looking to bounce back from their game against Oregon. SC was in town and looking vulnerable. The loser of this game would more than likely be out of the Rose Bowl/Pac-10 Championship race. At best, the loser of this game would be looking at a second tier bowl game. Surely, Cal would be ready to play and would take it to the Trojans.

This appeared to be the case as Cal took the opening drive of the game and drove down the field to the SC 5 yard line. Then suddenly, the game changed when Taylor Mays intercepted a Cal pass in the end zone to deny Cal from scoring first. SC then turned that turnover into 7 points and Cal was never the same. The Cal Golden Bears suddenly turned into the 'Gummy' Bears as Cal's next 3 possessions in the SC red zone only netted a single field goal.

My take on the game:

• The SC defense continues to play solid football. We stacked the box to stop Jahvid Best and dared Kevin Riley to beat us. We were able to stop Best and Riley wasn't able to play his best to beat us. (Interesting that this is the same game plan that the Huskies used to beat us!) The defense is clearly the strength of this SC team.
• This is the best the SC offense has looked this year. There was a nice balance (35 pass attempts and 42 rushes) that helped keep the Cal defense off balance. Matt Barkley is looking more comfortable as the starting QB and I'm hoping he gets the coaches' confidence whereby the playbook gets opened up more each week. Joe McKnight gained 119 yards on 20 carries and most importantly, he didn't fumble.
  
• The SC special teams actually looked competent this week...maybe we're finally starting to see some ROI from having a special teams coach! 3 for 3 on field goals, a punt return for a TD and decent coverage on our 3 punts.
• SC only had 5 penalties. It's still a few too much for me...particularly that personal foul penalty on Taylor Mays; however, it's much better than the week before.
  
• With all the positives above, we still left a ton of points on the table when we couldn't punch it in for TDs on multiple trips into the Cal red zone. Our 3rd down efficiency is still low and we still have issues on short yardage situations (we were turned away twice on 4th and short situations).

But a win is a win and this certainly helps as SC has 2 weeks to prepare for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. Hopefully, the team can get a few players back from injury (such as Ronald Johnson) and the offense can gel a little bit more. We're going to need to score as many points as possible as ND has a potent offense.

Fight On!