USC fends off Colorado, 35-31

The first seven games of USC’s football season were a tale of two teams — one that dominated opponents at the Coliseum to the tune of a 4-0 record and one that had yet to crack the win column outside of Los Angeles. 

USC certainly didn’t reverse the trend of shoddy road play Friday night in Boulder, Colo., but its nail-biting 35-31 win over the Buffaloes was a crucial victory for the team’s division title hopes. 

The Trojans played from behind almost the entire game and entered the fourth quarter facing their second 10-point deficit of the night. 

That’s when senior wide receiver Michael Pittman Jr. took over. 

USC took its first lead since early in the second quarter when freshman quarterback Kedon Slovis hit Pittman for a 37-yard touchdown with just 2:12 remaining in the game. 

It was Pittman’s second touchdown of the quarter — the first went for 44 yards with over 11 minutes remaining — and punctuated his 156-yard performance that featured 104 fourth-quarter yards. 

“Win. That’s it,” Pittman said of his mindset going into the fourth quarter. “I was just focused on winning the game.”

The play capped off a drive in which USC needed just about everything to go its way, which is essentially what happened. Slovis, who threw for 406 yards and four touchdowns in the win, threw two risky passes to freshman wide receiver Drake London that were nearly intercepted; one fell to the ground incomplete, and the other was caught for a 19-yard gain on second-and-20 to set up a run by redshirt junior running back Quincy Jountti that moved the sticks. 

During that same fourth-quarter drive, Slovis attempted to avoid a sack by dumping off a pass to freshman running back Kenan Christon, but the ball bounced off multiple Colorado defenders’ hands before falling to the ground. Slovis also fumbled on first-and-10 from USC’s 41-yard line, but Christon got a lucky recovery after the ball was kicked around by the Buffaloes. 

“Sometimes the ball bounces your way, and sometimes it hasn’t done that for us this year,” head coach Clay Helton said of the fumble. “Tonight, it did … luck was on our side there.”

That USC was in a position to steal the game with a late score was somewhat of a miracle to begin with. The Trojans’ injury-riddled defense limped its way to halftime down 3 points after struggling to contain Colorado senior quarterback Steven Montez, and the Buffaloes’ first two drives out of the break ended in touchdowns — including a 71-yard reception by junior wide receiver Laviska Shenault Jr. on the second play of the second half. 

However, when it absolutely needed stops, the Trojans came through. USC forced the Buffaloes to punt on their next four drives and picked up a game-sealing stop with 1:27 remaining when sophomore inside linebacker Kana’i Mauga tackled sophomore running back Alex Fontenot a yard short of a first down on a fourth-and-4. 

“At first, we started off slow, but we knew we had to get it up,” said sophomore cornerback Olaijah Griffin. “It was just little mistakes we were having, and we just came together as a team and said, ‘Let’s step this up.’ And we did.”

The Trojans had to make adjustments on the offensive side as well. USC entered the night already down its first three running backs on the depth chart, so Christon shared snaps at running back with sophomore wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown, who took the third play of the game to the house for a 37-yard rushing touchdown. St. Brown was USC’s second-leading rusher with 50 yards on the night. 

Offensive coordinator Graham Harrell said the idea to motion St. Brown into the backfield was born during the week of practice as a creative way to get the run game going.

“If you can just put the ball in your best players’ hands, you give yourself a chance, and that was just an easy way to get Amon-Ra a touch,” Harrell said. “And [it was] also a way to stay in that five-wide package and not just be completely one-dimensional where we were just going pass every single down, because we did have the threat of bringing Amon-Ra back in there and handing it to him.”

USC’s Pac-12 championship hopes almost certainly would have been doomed had it left Colorado empty-handed. But despite the injuries and subpar performance against the Buffaloes, USC still sits atop the Pac-12 South. For now, it controls its own destiny with a home matchup against No. 11 Oregon looming next week. 

“[The players] kept saying in there that this is our opportunity at a championship, and we needed this game to still be able to control our own destiny,” Helton said. “Just to walk out of here still on top of the Pac-12 South is special.”