Washington 32, USC 31. Lane Kiffin seemed genuinely disappointed last month that his first home game as USC's head coach, a lackluster 17-14 win over Virginia, "wasn't like the old days" at the L.A. Coliseum, "at all." That shouldn't be a problem after his second game: For a home crowd that endured the collapse of the Pete Carroll era, I'm guessing the latest trip to the loss column was all too familiar.
Going back to last year, the Trojans have now lost three of their last four Pac-10 games in the Coliseum, and four of six overall. They've lost two straight to the same team for the first time in almost a decade, and that team is Washington. Jake Locker's 420-yard explosion for the Huskies was the best performance of his career, by far, but the "incinerate USC's once-vaunted defense" thing has been done: By Oregon State, Oregon and Stanford last year, and by Hawaii in this year's opener. It's been done to death.
Compare Locker's big night in L.A. with his career-worst effort against Nebraska a few weeks back, in Seattle, and you've got pretty much all you need to know about the Trojan D right now.
And of course, it's only going to get worse: USC goes to Stanford next week and closes the month against Oregon, the attacks that first dragged the king's corpse around the village a year ago. I was one of the people who thought before the year that the staggering talent on hand was enough to give SC one last hurrah at the top of the Pac-10 before the heavy-handed sanctions took their toll. But the rot that set in last year has nothing to do with bowl bans or scholarship losses, and it may already be set too deep to repair.
- - -
Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.
No comments:
Post a Comment