As the clock ticked on a long, cold night in Pasadena, a small but powerful cheer rose from the shivering Rose Bowl crowd.
“We are…SC!”
In this 92nd meeting with UCLA, that wasn’t the case for the longest time.
The Trojans stumbled. They have failed. They smelled.
But then, in the last gasp of this street fight, they met themselves.
Lincoln Riley became SC coach. Jayden Maiava became a SC quarterback. Ja’Kobi Lane became an SC receiver.
And when it was done, a group of embracing young men in cardinal and gold bounced out of the blue-painted Rose Bowl with a 19-13 victory and a newfound definition of themselves.
For one of the few exciting moments in this tempestuous season, they were truly SC.
Read more: USC overcomes early miscues to beat rival UCLA and gain bowl eligibility
“Great, great win,” Riley said.
While this sixth win for the 6-5 Trojans qualifies them for a bowl game, they are still clearly not as good as they should be. But if you see them in the scarf-biting crowd late Saturday night, they might be stronger than anyone thinks.
And while they’ll rightfully be big playoff underdogs against Notre Dame at the Coliseum in their regular-season finale next week, the drama of Saturday’s win showed they may still be capable of moving into midfield to march and plant that Trojan sword.
While they’re essentially done — they missed the playoffs, and that’s all that matters here — this team isn’t actually done, and the final weeks of this disjointed dance could still be interesting.
“Winning builds confidence, it builds excitement, it’s validation of the things you do,” Riley said. “If we win one, especially like this, it’s obviously a huge win for us.”
Things got extremely interesting with 11:13 left in the game and the Trojans trailing 13-9.
They had already taken away three separate previous possessions from inside the UCLA five-yard line, settling for three field goals on lousy runs and misdirected passes.
They also failed to take advantage of three unsportsmanlike conduct penalties imposed on UCLA at the end of the first half, leading the Bruins to open the second half from Alhambra.
Read more: Plaschke: Can dynamic new USC quarterback Jayden Maiava revive Lincoln Riley?
The outmatched hosts had seemingly handed the game to USC on a silver platter, but the Trojans refused to take the game for a long time.
Then, early in that fourth quarter, USC essentially ripped it out of UCLA’s hands.
The rally started, as these things often have in later years, with a punt from the big Eddie Czaplicki that put UCLA at the one-yard line.
“It’s almost a Zen thing, there’s no doubt about what I’m doing now,” said Czaplicki, who was perhaps their best player in recent weeks.
The Bruins went three-and-out and their own punter, Brody Richter, moved one to center field. One play later, Maiava turned a pass in the backfield to Makai Lemon, who then completed a 39-yard pass to a wide-open Kyron Hudson, who took it to the four-yard line.
It was a great decision by Riley for a game that had barely tested the weakened Trojans — 27 players who called in sick on Tuesday.
“We barely repeated it,” Hudson said. “It’s having confidence in each other.”
He was asked if Lemon threw it that well in practice.
“He threw it even better, that’s the crazy thing,” Hudson said. “Makai, he’s a great athlete, a great player.”
This time the Trojans were ready for once, with Maiava running away from two Bruin defenders to find a leaping Lane in the back of the end zone.
The only better finisher Saturday was a former Bruin who was introduced to a thunderous standing ovation after the first quarter. Yes, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts was here.
As for Maiava, he’s still a work in progress. In his second game after taking over the starting job from Miller Moss, he wasn’t great, going just 19 of 35 for 221 yards while making several questionable decisions, but he made the only throw that counted.
“We have a great group,” Maiava said. “We have a resilient group.”
They have a group that is slowly but surely, better late than never, ending the game by stopping the Bruins on a fourth-and-1 failed quarterback sneak by Ethan Garbers.
“It was huge for us to give us confidence again that for us we really are the best team in the country,” safety Akili Arnold said.
If nothing else, in a revelation of a Saturday night, they once again became the best team in Los Angeles.
They were SC again.
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
