Trojans Are Hitting Their Stride at the Right Time Heading into Championship Game
by Brock Jense
It’s going to be an exciting weekend in college football. Conference championship weekend will cap what has been a great season.
Though it’s unfortunate for Ute fans everywhere that Utah isn’t in this conversation, the battle between USC and Stanford for the Pac-12 crown will still be great to watch. Both teams have a lot to play for. For Stanford, the playoff hopes still remain, though they are slim.
It seems that a lot of people are looking at this game and thinking Stanford will easily win the contest. I did this at first glance as well. However, when I took a closer look at each team’s entire body of work, among other things, I realized this game is going to be a lot more competitive than people might think.
It is important to note that these two teams have already played each other this season. However, it was early in the season, and it may have been forgotten by this point as it was the first conference game for each team.
The contest was competitive throughout the game, but ultimately Stanford beat USC on the Trojans’ home turf and started a skid for the Trojans that eventually led to the firing of former head coach Steve Sarkisian. USC would lose its next two of three, including a home loss to Washington. It was at this point in the season that people wrote off the Trojans for the Pac-12 and the College Football Playoff.
Since then, they have quietly been winning game after game during the second half of the season, with a lone loss coming from the hands of a much-improved Oregon team.
USC has some momentum right now. Its coaching position has been solidified for the future as Clay Helton shook the interim tag off of his title and was named head coach just the other day. Helton has shown he can get his team to play, and play well.
And clearly, the team likes to play for Helton, evident by a video released by USC Athletics when the announcement was made in a team meeting in the USC football facility. The players went crazy and started chanting Helton’s name, and clearly the new head coach has this team moving in a positive direction.
Stanford will be a test for them, but it’s far from impossible. Look to the game against UCLA last week, for example. It was a game with a lot at stake for each team, with the Pac-12 South title on the line and a chance to play for the Pac-12 championship. USC was clearly the better team, and the Trojans convincingly won that contest. They showed up in a big way on a big stage.
Another thing USC has going for it is that Stanford will be faced with the difficult task of beating the same team twice in the same year. It seems like in sports, this is always one of those things we talk about, and it is a hard thing to do. Each team is going to look a little different than they did at the beginning of the season, and it will present a challenge for the other.
It’s going to be a great championship game when these two teams face off. And though Stanford is a very good team, USC isn’t going down without a fight. USC could easily obtain the crown the media picked them to win prior to season’s beginning.
@brock_jensen02
Battle-Tested Cardinal Will Emerge as Conference Champ
by Tyler Crum
Yet another Pac-12 regular season has come to a close, and this year’s campaign definitely gave merit to the claim that crazy, unpredictable and upset-riddled seasons have become the new norm out in college football’s Wild West. USC and Stanford — predicted to finish first and second in their respective divisions in the preseason — saw their fair share of upsets, coaching drama, key injuries and other setbacks on the bumpy road to the conference title game.
The Trojans rallied past a disappointing 3-3 start to defeat every divisional opponent and cement their position as the top dogs in the South. In similar fashion, the Cardinal shook off their season-opening loss to Northwestern and established their dominance over the rest of the Pac, rattling off seven conference wins teams before falling just short against defending champion Oregon in Week 11.
The stakes are high for both teams, as USC will be hoping to bring its first title back to Los Angeles in seven years, and Stanford will have to play lights-out if it wants to get back in favor with the College Football Playoff selection committee. Saturday’s battle between these perennial conference heavyweights has the potential to be a tremendous game, but I feel certain the conference seat of power will return to the North for its eighth straight year.
The Cardinal are simply too good — they’ve played better than the Trojans in games against higher-quality opponents, their high-powered offense and staunch defense match up extremely well against Southern Cal, and they proved that when they took down USC 41-31 earlier in the season.
Taking a look at the schedules for both teams, it is safe to say that Stanford has a vastly superior résumé and has been the better team over the course of the whole season. The Trojans have lost four of their nine conference games and won three by a margin of eight points or less, including a mere three-point victory over last-place Colorado.
The Cardinal, on the other hand, suffered their only conference loss in a 38-36 nailbiter against Oregon — the Ducks proceeded to bludgeon USC by twenty points the following week — and have outscored their conference opponents by an average of 18 points in the team’s eight Pac-12 wins. While Clay Helton and the Trojans did a great job of righting the ship and winning games in spite of the media circus surrounding the team’s dismissal of head coach Steve Sarkisian, the fact remains that the Cardinal are a well-coached machine with the depth and big-game experience needed to continue their successful run.
Offensively and defensively, this game is an ideal match-up for the Cardinal, whose victory over USC earlier in the season likely foreshadowed how Saturday’s game will play out. In the teams’ Sept. 19 meeting, the Stanford offense excelled in the air and on the ground as the team racked up 474 total yards as veteran quarterback Kevin Hogan picked apart the Trojan secondary and standout running back Christian McCaffrey ran for 115 yards.
Stanford’s defense, despite playing slightly below its usual level, held the Trojans to 40 percent completion on third downs and came up with big plays when they were needed. Since the Week 3 battle, not much has changed fundamentally for either team as Stanford leads the conference in passing efficiency and is second in scoring offense, while USC has the league’s ninth-best passing defense and just the fifth-best in total offense.
Aside from the mentioned reasons, the Cardinal will emerge from Levi’s Stadium triumphant for one simple reason: It is their destiny, or at least they are playing like it is.
This weekend’s victory over Notre Dame and McCaffrey’s emergence as a Heisman contender show that Stanford deserves respect and recognition as one of the country’s elite teams. Fresh off an emotional win against a top ten team, the Cardinal are primed and ready to take down the Trojans and to put on a show for the committee that will earn them a playoff spot.
@tylerfcrum