This is the first of an ongoing series of articles reviewing the strange calendar year of sports for the Oregon Ducks. With the pandemic hovering over everything from practices, workouts, and the actual games, the Ducks managed to have yet another stellar year.
Although DucksWire.com is only a couple of months old, we were still there to witness everything that occurred with football from the lows to the highs.
And there were plenty of both.
Who would have thought that a season that contained a devastating loss to Oregon State and not playing Washington would end on a net positive, with an upset win over USC in the Coliseum?
It’s not that often that Oregon, in any sport, goes into a contest as a major underdog, but that was the situation when Mario Cristobal’s team entered the Pac-12 Championship.
Most think the Ducks shouldn’t have even been in the game because Washington had technically won the North. But since the coronavirus was sweeping through their program, Oregon moved into their slot.
Coupled with the fact that a small quarterback controversy was brewing with Tyler Shough and Anthony Brown, the 31-24 victory over the Trojans goes down as our Game of the Year for the 2020-21 sports year.
Oregon showed the No. 13 USC team that it wasn’t there to play checkers. The Ducks jumped on the home team right away to claim an early 14-0 lead. Both Brown and Shough saw time on the field. Each quarterback was responsible for the first two scores.
USC responded late in the first quarter with a 47-yard touchdown pass from Kedon Slovis to Amon St. Brown to make it 14-7. Oregon answered when Shough found tight end DJ Johnson for a 16-yard score and it was 21-7 in the second quarter.
The Trojans played catch-up for the entire night. The Ducks kept holding off USC in the second half with field goals from Henry Katelman, who turned out to be quite the revelation. He was a perfect 4-for-4 on extra points and nailed his only field goal attempt, a 40-yard kick that gave Oregon the 31-17 lead with 10:26 left in the fourth quarter.
Slovis did his best to bring his team back into the game late with a 60-yard drive that ended in a touchdown with just over six minutes left. He threw for 320 yards and managed to get the ball back with 4:43 on the clock.
But the Oregon defense buckled down, forced USC to punt and when the Trojans got the ball back, they had to go 80 yards to score and 23 seconds to do it. When the clock hits zero, the green and yellow confetti rained down and the Ducks had won their second straight conference title.
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