USC's Matt Barkley hopes to improve his performance at Arizona after he had the second-worst game of his USC career last year against the Wildcats
Last week, the USC Trojans became bowl eligible with a last-second win over Arizona State – or, rather, they would be bowl eligible had they not been forbidden from playing in a bowl game this year.
As other teams predict where they’ll play their bowl games and begin to make hypothetical travel plans while insisting they’re really only focusing on their next opponent, USC doesn’t have anything to focus on past their next few games.
Quarterback Matt Barkley says the Trojans, who faded down the stretch last season before showing up to pummel Boston College in the Emerald Bowl, still have something to prove, beginning this weekend in Tucson.
Last year, Arizona snapped a seven-game losing streak to the Trojans with a 21-17 win at the Coliseum. Throwing for only 144 yards, Barkley had his second-worst outing in any of his 21 games in a Trojan uniform.
Barkley, the team’s most visible leader, struggled mightily as last season came to a close.. At a glance, his stats for this year suggest he’s much improved: though he’s completed just 64% of his passes, he’s thrown for 2,348 yards and 24 touchdowns with just 8 interceptions.
Anyone who’s watched him throw one of those interceptions, though, has seen the sophomore struggle to consistently make smart decisions. Forcing throws – and overestimating his ability to make any throw he attempted – were typical of Barkley’s freshman year, but when Lane Kiffin took over for Pete Carroll at USC, he emphasized discipline and accountability, especially from his quarterback. Barkley has improved his ration of touchdowns to interceptions, but after two-thirds of a season of spotty play, he needs to do more to elevate his game to the next level.
No Trojan has more work to do that kicker Joe Houston. A former walk-on, Houston has made 6 of his 12 field goal attempts on the year. Fortunately for USC, he made one with three minutes left against Arizona State to claim a slim lead. Unfortunately, his two misses in the first quarter would’ve given the Trojans a lead early on and they might have pulled off a bigger win without it coming down to the wire.
It wasn’t just a case of game-time nerves for Houston, who missed three straight attempts in practice on Tuesday. The punter, Jake Harfman, could easily steal the job – but he’s no better at kicking field goals. Unless Houston and Harfman can get their heads and their feet right, the problem won’t be fixed this season (in fact, you could argue it’s gotten worse as the season progressed).
The burden, then, is on the offense to score touchdowns instead of settling for field goals, and on the defense, to keep their opponents off the board and keep the team from needing to rely on its wobbly kicking game.
The offense is 14th in the nation in both total offense and scoring offense, averaging 470.8 yards and 36.4 points per game. When the running backs have been on a tear, the passing game has struggled, and vice versa, but though consistency has been an issue, at least one facet of the offense has managed to put up points (can you imagine how good they’d be if all cylinders were firing simultaneously?)
It will be important for the passing game to click this week, as the Trojans face a Wildcats’ defense that leads the Pac-10 in scoring defense and rushing defense. USC’s running backs have been banged up and less effective in recent weeks than in the beginning of the season.
Barkley and his top receivers, Ronald Johnson and Robert Woods, will need to be on the same page, and even more importantly, Barkley will need stout protection from his offensive line. The Arizona defense has sacked opposing quarterbacks 27 times this season, and the Trojans will need to pay special attention to Ricky Elmore, who was responsible for eight of those.
The USC defense hasn’t fared quite as well, though it has improved since the beginning of the season. Still ranked near the bottom in total defense nationally (97th, giving up a staggering 423.9 yards per game), the defenders are at least making more tackles and key plays than in September. Junior T.J. Macdonald, the Pac-10’s Defensive Player of the Week after last week’s showing against the Sun Devils, leads the team with 68 tackles and three interceptions.
The Trojans D will have its hands full again this week with another dominant Pac-10 quarterback in Arizona’s Nick Foles. Foles ranks 30th nationally in pass efficiency with a 71.9% completion rate, and though he missed several games with a knee injury, he played well in his return against Stanford last week.
The Wildcats’ offense is only slightly less prolific than USC’s, averaging 30.6 points per game and ranking 19th in total offense. Foles’ biggest target, wide receiver Juron Criner, is battling an ankle injury of his own, but he leads the conference in receiving yards, averaging 98.2 yards per game. Arizona’s top tailback, Nic Grigsby, is also dealing with a high ankle sprain, but since the Wildcats have used a committee of backs this season, the run game shouldn’t suffer even if Grigsby isn’t playing at 100 percent.
Arizona came out on top last year, but not by too much, and the ‘Cats have not won back-to-back games against USC since 1999-2000. USC, meanwhile, is riding a four-game winning streak when playing in Tucson. This should be another fairly close contest, as two of the top quarterbacks and their blond, visor-wearing coaches faceoff at Arizona Stadium on Saturday.
