Saturday could be a turning point

Enough about Boston College already.

As one of the sports editors of this newspaper, I’ve read the phrase, “Coming off a 37-31 loss to unranked Boston College, the 18th-ranked Trojan football team is focused on preparing for Oregon State” countless times over the past two weeks, and I’ve been guilty of inserting it into other people’s stories as well.

But when you think about it, that game — that terrible, horrible, no good, very bad game — happened a full two weeks ago.

So much has happened in the world since USC’s last loss: Jameis Winston yelled a hilariously obscene phrase and got suspended for a game, the iPhone 6 was released and that one guy dropped it immediately, Roger Goodell held a mostly useless press conference and Amber Rose filed for divorce from Wiz Khalifa. Important stuff here, people.

Though many Trojan fans still aren’t quite over the humiliation that resulted from the upset at the hands of the Eagles, rest assured the team has put its head down and worked every day since then to improve and to make sure something like that doesn’t happen again.

The Trojans showed impressive resilience in the face of chaos last year — they never lost consecutive games despite going through three head coaches.

Such was not the case in 2012, though, as the Trojans limped to the finish line with three straight losses and five losses out of their last six games. Surely USC’s football team has learned a great deal since then and will come out on Saturday night ready to go.

Just because I feel like throwing more stats at you, I’d also like to share that the Trojans are 4-1 coming off the bye in their last five seasons, with their sole loss coming to then-top-ranked Oregon in November 2010, a game in which Oregon’s LaMichael James rushed for 239 yards.

Though that loss came at the hands of a superior team at the time, USC’s loss at Boston College did not. In the few days after the game, sophomore safety Su’a Cravens confirmed what many Trojan fans feared.

“We let the glamor of being in the top 10 get to us and that didn’t last very long,” Cravens told Scott Wolf of the Los Angeles Daily News. “The whole week we were off. We were lackadaisical and a little bit too nonchalant. We overlooked [Boston College].”

After dropping down to No. 17 in the AP Poll and sliding to No. 18 following the bye, the Trojans are no longer in a glamorous position. And despite Oregon State being unranked, USC knows it cannot overlook this undefeated Beaver squad.

Boston College had just been beaten by 10 at home against Pitt, and the Trojans were riding high after an upset of then-No. 13 Stanford.

USC is back to square one. The squad started the season ranked No. 15 by the Associated Press and was selected to finish second in the Pac-12 South. Today, the Trojans are ranked No. 18 in the AP poll and third in the Pac-12 South.

The Trojans will have to dig themselves out of their current hole if they want to achieve their goal of being Pac-12 South champions and live up to their legacy by making the new college football playoffs.

In a way, this weekend’s game against the Beavers gives the Trojans a chance to start fresh — it’s like a new season. Some projected that USC could go undefeated through its first games, so it’s not far-fetched to think that the Trojans could at least win their next seven and go 9-1 instead, should they beat the Beavers this weekend and the dangerous Arizona State Sun Devils next Saturday.

After Arizona State, USC faces five unranked Pac-12 teams before heading across town to take on the (overrated) UCLA Bruins. Since nobody has vocalized this yet, I’ll be the first to say UCLA does not look that good this season.

The No. 11 Bruins secured a freak victory over a terrible Texas team and barely escaped with wins over unranked Virginia and Memphis. Thursday night, they beat an Arizona State team that was without its starting quarterback and playing with a number of true freshmen on defense, so I’m still not convinced.

Quite a few of UCLA’s touchdowns this season have been pick-sixes, and if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll notice that USC’s redshirt junior quarterback Cody Kessler hasn’t thrown an interception all season.

Maybe denial is getting the best of me, but I’m going to stick to it for now.

The Trojan squad that steps onto the field this Saturday night will be telling of what to expect for the rest of the season. Should they win, I believe they’ll win the next couple of games, though this team never seems to act according to plan.

I predict the Trojans will bounce back because, as senior tight end Randall Telfer said after practice earlier this week, the team is “hungry to hit someone again.”

Me too, Randall, me too.

Aubrey Kragen is a senior majoring in communication. She is also the sports editor of the Daily Trojan. Her column, “Release the Kragen,” runs Fridays. To comment on this story, visit dailytrojan.com or email Aubrey at [email protected].