The USC Trojans did it … but what they did was not good at all. The men from Troy squandered a golden opportunity to have an unbeaten regular season and a Pac-12 title. They played the most prone to errors and the most full of mistakes of the season. The Trojans blew game after game, occasion after occasion, sequence after sequence. They made one mental mistake after another on Friday night. It seems like nothing has changed throughout the year. There weren’t many things that happened right Friday night against Oregon in the Pac-12 championship game, so instead of the usual “pins and crazy”, we have to be honest and consider the many crazy things in this loss. .
Let’s take a look at where everything went wrong.
duds
Clay Helton
He had the chance to do something remarkable; Clay Helton on the other hand, had a terrible day. The Trojans looked as poor as they were in almost two weeks, except for the second half against Utah and the first half against Washington. The team seemed mentally inadequate. The Trojans constantly put themselves in their way. They committed punishment after punishment, regardless of the fact that the players hurt their teammates in this process. When the head coach of this team had the chance to prepare his list for a conference title and a six-year-old bowl, he oversaw instead one of the poorest outings of the season. It’s a shame that USC probably won’t learn from this game or this season, instead using the fact that it has dropped – just one score – to justify the continued ignorance of obvious errors.
Kedon Slovis
The USC defender played well in the previous four quarters of this season, but, overall, he did not play very well this year. The reason USC has had to come from behind so often is that Slovis is constantly putting the Trojans in a bad situation. Slovis’ mistakes on Friday night led to 14 points from Oregon and the final turnover of the Pac-12 Championship game. He seemed to tremble all night and the mechanics were no longer there. After making several mistakes, he played scared the rest of the game. This was a bad game for Slovis to play so badly. He finally threw an interception in the fourth quarter, something he hadn’t done in previous games (but had almost done). His luck, as with Clay Helton’s luck, was exhausted.
Clock management
This team does not understand basic clock management or timeout management. The fact that the Trojans had to burn in a timeout on 4 and 20 is ridiculous. At that point, the team should have taken the penalty instead of wasting precious commodities. It’s hard to understand what Clay Helton thinks sometimes or how USC becomes so mentally fragile in situations where basic awareness could mean the difference between a touchdown and a downdown.