USC won a ballgame on Saturday. That was good. Just about everything else about this performance by the Trojans was bad.
Is that an undue overemphasis on the negative in the wake of a victory which pushed this team’s record to 4-0? Is that an unfair placement of primacy and centrality on what this team did wrong, instead of celebrating what this team did right?
It’s a legitimate debate, but we think it’s important to put the mistakes front and center in our immediate reaction to this Arizona State win. The fact that USC won the game should be secondary to the pervasiveness of mistakes and flaws in this contest.
This is not a playoff team. This is not a national championship contender. We can talk all we want about a “lookahead game” before Colorado next week, and how this was the first road game of the season, and how Arizona State did put forth a great effort — all of that is true — but USC is supposed to take care of its own business and be consistent.
The Trojans did not handle their business cleanly and reliably. They did enough to win … in a game in which they were favored by 35 points versus an opponent missing over 10 starters and four starting offensive linemen.
Arizona State had the ball early in the fourth quarter with a chance to take the lead. The game was that tenuous until the Trojans created a two-score lead (and lost it, and got it back).
Let’s go through the moments and reactions which were part of a very ugly night in Tempe, a night which raises lots of uncomfortable questions about this team: