USC Could Have, Would Have, Should Have Beaten Stanford
The Trojans had it on Saturday night. They had the No. 4 team in the country on the ropes, with their back against the wall. But with as much time as triple overtime gave them, the 20th ranked Trojans just couldn’t land the knockout punch on the Stanford Cardinal, losing 56-48 in one of, if not the most dramatic and entertaining games of the college football season.
A week after dominating Notre Dame in South Bend, the same team showed up for the Trojans at the Coliseum. Matt Barkley was effective throughout, supplementing the Serra High duo of Woods and Lee with tight-end Randall Telfer, who saved his best game of the season against the Trojans’ best opponent. On the ground, Curtis McNeal took over in the second half yet again, scoring on a pair of long touchdown runs to open up a 20-10 USC lead early in the third quarter, absolutely electrifying the Coliseum. But despite the success of the Trojan offense, it was the defense that nearly won the game.
For the first time all season, Stanford (and future Miami Dolphins) quarterback Andrew Luck was under duress. The Trojans got to him numerous times, with Devon Kennard sacking him twice, Wes Horton forcing him to fumble, and Nickell Robey picking him off late in the fourth quarter and taking it in for a go-ahead score. The defense held the Cardinal to an uncharacteristic 10 points in the first half, and forced them to punt the ball five times, the most for Stanford since the 2009 Sun Bowl against Oklahoma.
Yet, despite the stellar play of the defense, USC still allowed the Cardinal to hang around more than once. Ahead by a touchdown and a defensive stop from icing the game, the Trojans would have forced Luck into a 4th and 6 situation at their own 40-yard line if it wasn’t for a helmet-to-helmet hit from T.J. McDonald on Chris Owusu. The hit gave the Cardinal 15-yards and a first down, conjuring up memories of Darnell Bing’s late hit during Vince Young’s final drive in the 2006 Rose Bowl, and Chris Galippo’s late hit in Palo Alto last season, propelling both Texas and Stanford to late game heroics. And so right on cue, Luck and his receivers took the lifeline and marched down the field to tie the game up on a 2-yard touchdown run from Stephan Taylor with just 38 seconds to play. The drive essentially forced overtime and should go down as one of Luck’s best at the collegiate level, especially coming immediately after the pick-six to Robey.
But even after Stanford tied it, the Trojans weren’t done letting the game slip through their fingers, as on the ensuing drive with the game tied 34-34, Robert Woods failed to get down before time ran out at the end of regulation, as he streaked across the field after catching a slant pass with nine seconds remaining. Had Woods have either been ruled out of bounds with a second left or slid to the ground in the middle of the field, he would have set up a roughly 50-yard game-winning field goal for freshman kicker Andre Heidari. It wouldn’t have been a chip shot by any means, but Heidari had already connected from 50-yards out with a booming, yet wind-aided kick in the second quarter. So by Woods not stopping the clock, the game shifted to overtime, as Luck would have it.
Luck led the Stanford to score on three drives in overtime, just as you would have expected him to. And while the Trojans and Matt Barkley matched the first two scores rather quickly, the third overtime became their ultimate demise. After Marqise Lee nearly scored on their opening play of the drive, Curtis McNeal fumbled the ball into the end zone on the very next play, and Stanford’s A.J. Tarpley recovered the ball to clinch the victory and solid game for the sophomore linebacker.
So while it would be easy to blame McNeal in the moment,
sitting
standing in a full, yet stunned Coliseum, the miscues before overtime bring up the “what if” game in the long run. And so for a second straight year, the Trojans couldn’t stop Luck at the end, helped him with a penalty and got burned at the one-second mark. At least both teams proved that this wasn’t a repeat of their respective battles with Oregon from a year ago. Against the Ducks, Stanford crumbled in the second half in a hostile environment, and the Trojans gained a third quarter lead and momentum, only to immediately fall flat on their face in front of the GameDay crew.
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