USC’s first taste of Big 10 football is not going particularly well.
Its struggles continued on Saturday afternoon with a stunning 29-28 loss at Maryland that saw USC blew a 14-point fourth quarter lead with less than 10 minutes to play.
The loss drops the Trojans to 3-4 through their first seven games and leaves them with just a 1-4 record in conference play. Prior to losing to Maryland, USC had already lost conference games against Michigan, Minnesota and Penn State.
The Maryland loss was by far the most stunning, though, because the Terrapins are not a particularly good Big 10 team. Maryland entered play on Saturday with the same 3-3 record as USC, but two of its three wins came against an FCS team and Connecticut. Just a week ago Maryland allowed 37 points to Northwestern in a 37-10 loss.
Given that USC was seemingly in control of the game with less than 10 minutes to play, it is quite simply a game it should not have lost. Or could afford to lose.
It is one thing to lose to a top-ranked team like Penn State in overtime.
This is a significantly larger problem for head coach Lincoln Riley and his program and is now leading to some pretty big questions about where the team goes from here.
As it relates to Riley, this season appears to be on track to continue a downward trend for him since he took over the program prior to the 2022 season. In his first year at USC, Riley took them from four wins to 11 wins after raiding other programs in the transfer portal and bringing in quarterback Caleb Williams and wide receiver Jordan Addison.
But that season was followed by a disappointing 8-5 showing in 2023 (with Williams still as his quarterback) and USC is already up to four losses this season. The Trojans need to win all five of their remaining regular-season games (or four of them plus a bowl game) just to match last year’s disappointing win total.
The other concern is how much the switch to the Big 10 is impacting the players from a travel perspective. Three of USC’s four Big 10 losses have come in games in which the team had gone on the road and traveled across multiple time zones (at Michigan, at Minnesota and Saturday at Maryland).
USC’s only Big 10 home loss was last Saturday’s game against Penn State, while their only Big 10 road win came at Wisconsin.
That sort of travel is a big adjustment for players and their routines. NFL teams have traditionally struggled when traveling from the West Coast to the East Coast and that is especially true for early kickoff games. It stands to reason that the same thing would apply to college players and teams.
Whatever the reason , the reality is USC is off to a brutal start in its new conference and needs something to dramatically change in the coming weeks to turn the season around. Losing at Maryland is not what anybody in Southern California had in mind when the Trojans joined the new conference.
