Trojans surprised us on Saturday

I’m an idiot.

OK, not exactly. But I certainly look like one if you go back and read this past Friday’s Daily Trojan.

I was the only of five sportswriters to predict in the Best Bets table that USC would lose to Stanford. I was absolutely rooting for the Trojans to pull off the upset and exploded with the other couple thousand USC fans in Stanford Stadium as senior kicker Andre “The Lumberjack” Heidari’s 53-yard field goal attempt went through the uprights. But my attempt to be the smartest guy in the room last week backfired, and I may have to start picking against USC every week for good luck.

I stand by the thought process behind my prediction; USC obviously outscored Stanford, but I wouldn’t necessarily say the squad outplayed the Cardinal. Nonetheless, the Trojans proved that the media — myself included — very much underestimated how good this team is.

A look at the stat line and it’s easy to figure out why the score looked the way it did Saturday. Stanford had 413 yards to USC’s 291, 21 first downs to 16, eight penalties for 68 yards to 10 penalties for 87 yards and 33:47 time of possession to USC’s 26:13. But the one stat that matters most wasn’t in Stanford’s favor, as the Cardinal had two turnovers and USC had none.

The timing of the two turnovers, both fumbles, was huge. The first one came just after senior linebacker Hayes Pullard was ejected from the game for a targeting penalty on a big Stanford kick return. Just when it seemed like Stanford had grabbed all the momentum, the Cardinal gave it right back. The second one came on Stanford’s final drive at USC’s 25-yard line and sealed the win for the Trojans when a touchdown from Stanford would have stolen it.

The other big stat a little deeper in the box score illustrates another telling story: USC made both of its field goal attempts while Stanford missed two of three. Those six points left on the table would have been the difference with all else equal.

And that’s not even counting the field goal attempts Stanford passed up because of a lack of confidence in the team’s kicking game that day. The Cardinal punted from USC’s 29-yard line instead of attempting a 46-yarder on its second drive. Stanford went for it on fourth-and-1 on USC’s 3-yard line instead of kicking but got stopped on the sixth drive and punted from USC’s 32-yard line on the eighth drive instead of attempting a 49-yarder.

I’m not an accounting major, but I’ve got over two touchdowns’ worth of points left on the table by Stanford because of special teams. Maybe you chalk up the turnover on downs to a well-executed goal-line stand by USC instead of a bad play call. But a field goal attempt would have made sense there in such a close game, and Steve Sarkisian elected to kick when the Trojans had a fourth-and-1 from Stanford’s 7-yard line.

So with all of that considered, did USC win the game or did Stanford lose it? Do all those mistakes indicate that the Trojans are a better team than Stanford, or that USC just got lucky a bunch of times? There’s obviously a little bit of both, but the implication of where the balance lies is huge. I think there’s a very good chance USC and Stanford play again in the Pac-12 championship game, a victory which will almost certainly guarantee a spot in the four-team national championship playoff.

If you had told me before the game that USC was going to win because of its exponentially superior placekicking, I would have called you an idiot. I haven’t always had faith in Heidari, and I would have gone for it instead of kicking on both the fourth-and-1 from the 7-yard line and the fourth-and-5 from the 35-yard line. But me not knowing anything has been a consistent theme this column, and Sarkisian turned out to have made the right call in both situations without the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. Heidari does love beating Stanford, but Stanford’s kicker Jordan Williamson went 18-for-22 last year, so I imagine he would play better in a rematch.

The fact that USC showed toughness when it mattered most, though, is something I should have seen coming. The team has been mentally tested with adversity early this season, all of last season and really all of the last four years since the NCAA sanctions. So it wasn’t surprising — though it was very impressive — to see how the team reacted to the Pullard ejection.

It looked like a very soft call from the stands — though replay and most commentary confirm it was a legitimate call given new targeting rules — and it would have been very easy for the team to let anger with the officials snowball given the loss of a senior captain for the rest of the game (and the first half of the next game), especially after the sideline flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct just before the snap. Instead, the team directed all that energy towards forcing a fumble on the next play, arguably the biggest moment of the entire game.

Whether Stanford’s problems were aberrations or indicative of endemic weakness in the program is yet to be seen. We’ll find out when the Cardinal plays Oregon and possibly in the conference title game.

But that conference title game is looking like a distinct possibility for USC. UCLA had another very underwhelming non-conference performance, and the Trojans are now the top-ranked team in the South division, though that race is far from over.

With how exciting this new rivalry has become, and with the Pac-12 championship game scheduled to be played in the San Francisco 49ers’ new Levi’s Stadium, I would love nothing more than a rematch for Weekender round two.

 

Luke Holthouse is a sophomore majoring in broadcast and digital journalism and policy, planning and development. His column, “Holthouse Party” runs Wednesdays.