Tag: TrojansWire.com

Which former Pac-12 team has the highest ceiling in year 1 of the expanded Big Ten?

A look at which former Pac-12 team has the highest ceiling year year 1 of the expanded Big Ten conference in 2024.

Next season of college football is going to be very different and strange.

Oregon, Washington, and the Los Angeles schools will compete in the Big Ten and the College Football Playoff is expanding by six more teams.

USC began this process with the other schools following and going their own way. The end result was the death of the Pac-12. Although the Ducks will be playing in a new conference, according to TrojansWire, Oregon will be the prohibitive favorite thanks to one player.

“Dillon Gabriel is a much better quarterback than Will Howard (Ohio State), and certainly much more proven and established than (USC’s) Miller Moss,” TrojansWire.com editor Matt Zemek said. “The Ducks are recruiting well and adding players via the transfer portal well across the board. They appear to have the most balanced team with an anchor at the sport’s most important position. They’re in the driver’s seat right now.”

While we at DucksWire would like to agree and Zemek is probably right, we would like to think Oregon is just one of several really good teams in the Big Ten in 2024. The Buckeyes, Wolverines, and Nittany Lions will provide stiff competition.

Since he does cover one team in Los Angeles, Zemek has a unique perspective on UCLA as well and for some reason, he’s not as high on former Bruin and current Duck quarterback Dante Moore as most people.

“Moore struggled in 2023. I didn’t get the sense he was about to turn the corner or that one more year was going to bring forth his best,” Zemek said. “He just didn’t live up to the hype. The Bruins need an elite portal quarterback in the spring.”

He is right, however. UCLA is in trouble if they don’t find a quarterback soon.

What’s gone wrong with the USC Trojans so far this season?

At 6-5, USC’s Andy Enfield still has time to figure this out, but he’s skating on ice if he doesn’t.

The last Pac-12 men’s basketball season begins on Thursday and in one of the openers, an under-performing USC Trojans squad comes into Matthew Knight Arena to play an injury-riddled Oregon team.

It’s not quite the scenario either team planned on when the season got underway, but the Ducks do get Keeshawn Barthelemy back this week with Mookie Cook and N’Faly Dante expected to be back soon.

As for the Trojans, it’s not injury, but chemistry. The talent is there, but as we discussed with TrojansWire editor Matt Zemek, coach Andy Enfield needs to figure some things out. We asked if there’s still time to turn this around and if they do, what needs to happen.

“Enfield has to rework his offense. Too much dribbling. Too many isolation plays. Not nearly enough ball movement,” he said. “One thing I thought Isaiah Collier would bring to the table was an ability to draw defenders on drives and then throw lob passes to the big men for dunks and layups. We have seen very little of that. Enfield has this roaring Ferrari at point guard but can’t figure out how to start the ignition and get the car out of the garage. It’s beyond depressing.”

That’s exactly the kind of offense Oregon is looking to hurt opponents with, but the Ducks haven’t had point guard Jackson Shelstad and Dante on the floor at the same time yet. Oregon can only hope the Trojans don’t figure it out until after the game on Thursday. If they don’t gain some chemistry this season or if it’s too late, Zemek says Enfield is skating on thin ice.

“The coach just hasn’t been up to the job, and unless USC can scramble and make the NCAA Tournament — it will need to have a monster Pac-12 season (maybe three or four losses maximum) — Enfield should be fired,” he said. “This was his huge chance to establish long-term job security and lift USC to a higher level. Instead, he is face-planting. There have to be consequences for that. This was a prove-it season. Enfield is proving he can’t hack it.”

College basketball is a game of adjustments and most of the time, last-minute, down-to-the-wire adjustments. Most Duck fans would take Dana Altman any day and it sounds like Trojan fans would take Altman too in this case.

Oregon vs. USC Preview: Andy Enfield’s seat is getting surprisingly warm in LA

USC men’s basketball has underperformed so far and as they head to Eugene, we asked Matt Zemek @TrojansWire why.

Lincoln Riley isn’t the only coach at USC to feel a bit uneasy these days.

At just 6-5, the Trojans come into Matthew Knight Arena on Thursday for the Pac-12 opener desperately needing a win. Coach Andy Enfield is also needing a win as his seat has become rather hot just two seasons after being named the Pac-12 Coach of the Year.

USC was picked to finish third and be a virtual lock to be in the NCAA tournament, possessing a roster bolstered with young talent. Enfield brought in a heralded recruiting class that included Bronny James and Isaiah Collier. While James has been out with medical issues until recently, the talent on that roster should have been able to overcome losing James.

The Trojans biggest wins has been against Kansas State and Seton Hall, but losses to Oklahoma, UC-Irvine and Long Beach State in double overtime have the faithful wondering what’s going on?

We decided to find out from the source and our friend Matt Zemek, editor of TrojansWire to get the details. We were pretty direct and asked why were the Men of Troy underperforming and Zemek didn’t mince words.

“Two words: Andy Enfield. We at USC hoped Enfield could take Cadillac talent and make it roar, but so far, no dice,” he said. “This is high-end talent. Boogie Ellis coming back for another year. Kobe Johnson coming back for another year. D.J. Rodman is a good player. We all saw him do well at Washington State. He was not an easy player for either USC or Oregon to handle. Then add the No. 1 recruit in the Class of 2023, Isaiah Collier. Man, that’s a lot of material. It should have added up to a loaded roster and a team that could impose its will on opponents. Bronny James is now on board. All of this should be so much better than what it has been.”

It’s hard to imagine Enfield just forgot how to coach. Sometimes the chemistry just isn’t there for a team. The Ducks have seen that before. There’s still time for the Trojans to turn things around, but hopefully, that occurs after they leave Eugene and head for Corvallis.

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College Wire’s Pac-12 writers make their Week 9 selections

The winner of the Washington-USC game will determine a lot as to which team(s) will be in Vegas for the conference championship.

We’re down to the 3/4 mark of the college football season and the Pac-12 is rounding into form just as we thought it would with a couple of surprises along the way.

Oregon, Washington, and USC are the three teams vying for the two spots in the conference title game and after this week, that picture will become more clear. Washington goes to SC and if the Huskies win that, they can pretty much punch their ticket to Vegas. The Trojans and Ducks meet up the very next week and that winner is probably the Huskies’ opponent.

But teams such as Oregon State and UCLA can still have their say if things go their way. Arizona is a much better team than we all thought with the emergence of freshman quarterback Noah Fifita and despite its recent loss to the Ducks, the Utes can still have a big say on how things will go down in the last ever Pac-12 season as it is formed right now.

The big game this week is the Dawgs and Trojans battling it out in the Coliseum and some of the College Wire Pac-12 writers still think USC has a chance. But oddly enough, Matt Zemek, the editor of TrojansWire.com, gave  a specific prediction for that game, not just the winner.

Here are the selections.

College Wires writers make their Week 5 Pac-12 selections

Week 5 shouldn’t contain many surprises, if any, but that’s when chaos usually happens. Our Pac-12 writers make their picks.

The Pac-12 football schedule was in full swing last week, but there weren’t any surprises. Arizona State hung with USC for as long as it could before the Trojans won, 42-28. Utah outlasted UCLA, 14-7. Perhaps the biggest so-called surprise, although no one in Pullman would say it was a shock, the Cougars defeated Oregon State by three.

Surprises shouldn’t be on the docket in the conference this week either. The only toss-up game will be in Berkeley as California hosts Arizona State. Two mediocre teams playing each other could make for an exciting and close game.

Oregon State hosts Utah on Friday, and everyone is going to want to see how Colorado rebounds after its first loss of the season.

The College Wires Pac-12 scribes enter their picks for Week 5 of conference action with some differing opinions for that Golden Bears-Sun Devils matchup.

CollegeWire writers make their Week 2 Pac-12 selections

The CollegeWire Pac-12 scribes met up and predicted how Week 2 of the season will go down.

Deion Sanders and the Colorado Buffaloes gave the Pac-12 a perfect Week 1 and they also gave our friends over at BuffaloesWire something significant to talk about for the first time in a long while.

Even Stanford, who is picked to finish last, managed a win over Hawaii.

Now as Week 2 approaches, that success is expected to wain just a bit as the competition gets a little tougher. But there are still a lot of questions to be answered such as can Colorado handle success? Will Oregon be tested in its first road game of the season? And can UCLA go into SEC Country and bring home a win?

Our Pac-12 writers from across the three sites bring you our predictions for a busy second full week of the college football season.

CollegeWire Pac-12 writers selects Heisman and conference winners

CollegeWire’s Pac-12 writers gathered together to discuss the final Pac-12 football season and who will win the Heisman.

After this season, the five CollegeWire writers who cover Pac-12 sports and our respective teams will no longer be able to get together and discuss how the Conference of Champions is going. Oregon and USC are moving to the Big Ten and Colorado is going back to some old stomping grounds in the Big XII.

So to celebrate, or more like, commiserate, we got together to talk about how the 2023 Pac-12 season will go. In separate articles, we went over each schedule (USC, Oregon, Colorado) and picked the winner of each game.

We also discussed who is going to win the Heisman Trophy and which two teams will meet up in Vegas and win the very last Pac-12 football title. It’s hard to believe that is the case, but here we are.

Oregon Ducks Football: 2023 game-by-game staff predictions

The CollegeWire’s Pac-12 writers that cover Oregon, Colorado and USC got together and predicted each game on the Ducks’ schedule.

We just started.

TrojansWire is four years old. Then came DucksWire and ColoradoBuffaloesWire is the baby of the family. But this will be the final season we are all together in the Pac-12 as Oregon and USC move to the Big Ten and Colorado goes back to the Big XII.

So in one last hurrah, we all got together to discuss what will happen with our teams in this final Pac-12 season. TrojansWire editor Matt Zemek, writer Matt Wadleigh, BuffalosWire editor Jack Carlough and of course, DucksWire editor Zac Neel and I talked about how 2023 was going to shape up.

We gave our predictions for each team and the final Pac-12 standings. Here’s how we each think Oregon’s season will go game-by-game. There was a consensus in the obvious games, but when it came to the USC, Washington, and even OSU games, there was a difference of opinion.

No matter what, 2023 promises to be one memorable season for all of us.

Check out our game-by-game predictions for the USC Trojans in 2023 here

Pac-12 has sent some greats to play Oregon inside Autzen Stadium

There have been so many great players from all of the 11 other Pac-12 teams to make their way through Autzen Stadium. These are some.

Autzen Stadium opened its doors for the 1967 season and ever since the Pac-12 (Pac-8 and Pac-10) Conference has had so many great players make their way into Eugene.

In doing a podcast with TrojansWire.com editor Matt Zemek, we discussed the history of USC vs. Oregon as the Trojans will be playing their last season in the Conference of Champions. USC makes its way to Autzen in 2023 and it could be the last trip to Eugene for quite a while.

We mentioned towards the end of the podcast that Reggie Bush might be the absolute best opposing player we’ve seen play against the Ducks. He was unstoppable.

That led to the thought of who was the best player to make their way through Autzen for each conference team. It doesn’t mean they had a big game(s), however and we could have gone a number of places with this. But below is the 11 memorable conference opponents to meander their way through Autzen Stadium.

Here’s the latest edition of Trojans Wired.

Oregon baseball hopes to continue USC’s struggles with Northwest teams

Oregon baseball goes down to Los Angeles to take on USC, so we asked Trojans Wire’s @MattZemek for a scouting report.

The Pac-12 season is heading down the homestretch with just three weekend series remaining. Oregon is battling to host a regional in the NCAA tournament and the Ducks’ upcoming opponent, USC, is squarely on that bubble.

This weekend’s matchup in Los Angeles is important for different reasons for both teams. The Trojans seem to be two teams, a good one at home (20-5) and a bad one on the road (4-13-1). With the Ducks going to Dedeaux Field to play the good USC team, we just had to go to TrojansWire’s Matt Zemek to see what’s the deal with this Trojan team with that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde mentality. Here is his brief scouting report.

It’s an unproven team under a first-year head coach Andy Stankiewicz. USC has not tasted success in baseball for a long time. The glory days are part of the distant past. Stankiewicz has done a great job with this team, but growing pains were always going to be part of the equation in Year 1 of his tenure. It’s a lot like basketball role players and reserves playing well at home and not on the road. This team feeds off confidence from the enthusiastic crowds it has seen (and heard) at Dedeaux Field. Going on the road is a different beast. It’s a lot like football: The Pacific Northwest is often this team’s graveyard, and we’ve seen it in the recent series against Oregon State and Washington.

Both the Huskies and Beavers swept the Trojans on their home fields, a luxury the Ducks don’t have here. Oregon is coming off a two-game losing streak, but a Pac-12 regular season title is still in the cards.

The Ducks (30-14, 13-8) are in third place, but just two games back of first-place Stanford.

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