What Went Wrong?

What was once an annoying little side note to the overall success experienced by the Trojans has become an official albatross, USC cannot win the "small one".  For all the Pac-10 titles under Pete Carroll, for all the Rose Bowl wins, for the Heisman Trophies and national championships, the reality now is that you can't mention any of that without also mentioning the mounting losses against lesser opponents.  

We all know the list.  Oregon State in 2006 and 2008.  13-9 against UCLA.  2007 against an 42 point underdog Stanford team.  And now, you can add Washington.  I don't have the answers to what is going wrong.  Pete Carroll doesn't have the answers either, if he did he would fix it.  Under his watch, the Trojans were a team that, up until yesterday, still had a realistic chance to cement their place as the Team of the Decade.  You don't accomplish that as a coach without having a good idea of what you are doing.  Unfortunately, the stigma of losing to lesser teams has now become attached to Carroll's name as much as any of his successes.  

How does this continue to happen?  I honestly thought that the prospect of losing yet another one of these games yesterday was enough to give Carroll some kind of power to will us to victory.  There is no way he is going to let this happen again, is there?  Everyone in the country pointed to this as a trap game.  All the signs were there.  It was precisely for those reasons that I figured Carroll would be able to reach down and pull out the keys to victory, to prove the doubters wrong. Unfortunately, all the Trojans did was add fuel to that growing fire of doubt.

As for the game itself, let's first of all take a look at what went right.  We started off running the ball well.  Joe McKnight and Stafon Johnson each had long runs early in the game.  Stanley Havili was running with power and purpose.  We even got a dose of Allan Bradford with a punishing pair of back to back runs.  It was the kind of offensive start Trojan fans had been looking for.  The defense also did their part.  Jurrell Casey is on his way to becoming a dominant interior player and Nick Perry is showing that he can be a playmaker as well.  The linebackers were very involved, Chris Galippo controlled the middle of the field and Mike Morgan was running sideline to sideline in pursuit of Husky quarterback Jake Locker.  You can't fault the defense for this one.  

Unfortunately for the Trojans, there was a lot more that went wrong along the shores of Puget Sound.  Seattle native Taylor Mays was unable to play, a tough blow both for the Trojans and for Mays who had to be anxious for one last performance in front of his hometown crowd.  Quarterback Matt Barkley, fresh off leading a dramatic last minute drive last week, was also sidelined with a shoulder that simply wasn't ready to go.  In his place, we entered the game with Aaron Corp.  Not to worry, I thought, as up until a few weeks ago Corp was scheduled to be our starter and he would surely take advantage of his opportunity to show what he is made of.  That didn't turn out to be the case. I've had a chance to cover Aaron Corp a lot over the years, primarily during his career at Orange Lutheran, and the player we saw yesterday did not resemble the guy I've seen in the past.  Aaron Corp is a good quarterback folks.  It's just a shame this might be the game people remember him by because it was clearly not his best effort.  He seemed timid, unsure of himself and he made some poor decisions.  That is not the player who was named California State Player of the Year.  Again, I don't know what went wrong but it certainly did go wrong for Aaron on this day.  In fact, his 110 passing yards were the lowest performance by a quarterback in the Pete Carroll era.

On the flip side, Husky quarterback Jake Locker seemed to make the right plays at the right time.  He went 4 for 4 on a touchdown drive at the end of the first quarter to get his team back in the game after USC had jumped out to a 10-0 lead.  This was critical to keeping the crowd in the game.  The Trojans then helped to feed that crowd with turnovers and penalties.  Stafon had a fumble.  Corp threw a pick in the red zone against double coverage.  Havili fumbled.  We couldn't convert third downs, 0-10 on the day as a matter of fact.  You aren't going to win many games with a zero in the third down conversion column.  Locker got hot again on the final scoring drive of the day with some key passing, including a huge 3rd and 15 conversion, and an ill-timed roughing the passer call against Averell Spicer.  Last year Averell found the coaches doghouse after a critical penalty in the loss to OSU, will history repeat itself here?  We shall see.

I also found it ironic that one of the players who hurt us, freshman UW receiver James Johnson from San Diego, who had seven catches for 72 yards, wasn't even recruited by USC.  We are the school who is supposed to be known for playing freshmen, for giving them a chance.  We also struggled mightily in the passing game despite having a full complement of highly recruited receivers on our roster.  Sure, we are missing Ronald Johnson, a big loss, but we still have plenty of receivers that were selected to be Trojans ahead of James Johnson yet he was the one catching passes all day yesterday while the Trojans were unable to get much of anything going through the air.  

Where do we go from here?  We move on to Washington State.  There is still much to play for this season, lots left to be accomplished.  Knowing the history of the Trojans under Pete Carroll, we will probably be treated to a strong finish and another big bowl game.  I would like to see that.  It's just unfortunate that no matter what happens the rest of the way, no matter how many games we win or how impressive we may finish, the reality is that when people discuss the 2009 Trojans they will always say "yeah, but there was that loss to Washington".