USC stops a go-ahead two-point conversion in game’s final seconds for a wild win over Cal.
USC running back Austin Jones scores a touchdown while Cal defensive back Jeremiah Earby attempts a tackle during the first half of an NCAA college football game in Berkeley, Calif., Saturday, Oct. 28, 2023. BERKELEY – The man trapped in a burning house laid it all on the line, motioning his players towards him tight in a huddle after another confounding mistake, getting on a knee and staring into their eyes as a season crumbled.
Cal running back Jaydn Ott had run for two touchdowns, already, each with all the difficulty of a toddler stampeding through grass. He ran for another, after Grinch’s impassioned sideline rant, and USC’s defense collapsed again and again in a deflating three quarters that made green quarterback Fernando Mendoza look like a god, three quarters that beat away what little hope a fanbase had in a dying USC season.
On Cal’s first drive of the third quarter, with USC down 28-17, he swallowed up a fourth-down run for a solo tackle to force a turnover. Two drives later, he read a Fernando Mendoza pass perfectly and reached back to snare a one-handed interception, coming away pointing at his arm like the D’Angelo Russell “ice in my veins” celebration. With the score tied and time waning in the fourth quarter, he forced a fumble to give the ball back to USC’s offense.
The kickoff was delayed, Williams-and-company milling about on the sidelines for a good few minutes, thanks to a midfield protest related to the suspension of a Cal professor. And things didn’t get any less weird, even after protestors were eventually walked off in handcuffs by security, in a complete and utter collapse by USC’s defense.
Then Ott hit a wide-open left-side gap on the next drive, easily darting past the diving De’Jon Benton, and rumbled 61 yards to the house for another score.drive, waited patiently for blockers to seal off a USC defensive line that looked like children treading water in the deep end, and scampered into the end zone for his third touchdown of the half.
It was ruled, eventually and unbelievably, that there was one second left on the first-half clock and USC would have one play from the same spot to begin the second half. Kicker Denis Lynch had minutes, then, at halftime toIn Year 3 at USC, ‘Chef Tahj’ Washington is cooking defenses like never before
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