No. 15 USC at No. 7 Oregon
USC won the toss and instead of deferring took the ball 75 yards downfield on an 11 play five minute drive that ended up in the end zone on an 8 yard TD pass from their Junior QB Jayden Maiava to Junior WR Makai Lemon to take a 7-0 lead and make me think that this game was going to be all I had imagined it would be. Then, after falling behind 14-7 on back-to-back Oregon TD’s on either side of a four-and-out, I was sure of it when Lemon caught a backward pass from Maiava and threw it downfield 24 yards to Freshman WR Tanook Hines in the end zone to tie the score at 14-14 early in the second quarter. Wow—this was going to be a game!
But then it all started to fall apart on the Trojan’s next possession. Stuck at 4th and 6 on their own 36 yard line they had to punt and even though still very early in the game the Duck’s 85 yard punt return for TD that the Trojan’s special teams allowed was the beginning of the end of USC’s only hope of making it into this year’s college football playoff. Maiava would follow that up with an interception six plays into their next possession to hammer another nail into the coffin. A glimmer of hope for USC flashed by when Oregon’s Atticus Sappington’s 44 yard field goal attempt late in the 2nd Qtr hit the goal post. But in trying to block the attempt USC committed a penalty which resulted in a first down for the Ducks. Three plays later Oregon was back in the end zone to take a 28-14 lead into the half. The teams would match each other with TD’s in both the third and fourth quarters but the damage had already been done and the 42-27 defeat would be Lincoln Riley’s fifth loss without a win against a Top-10 team in his four year stretch at USC.
For Oregon, Sophomore QB Dante Moore connected on 22-of-30 for 257 yards, 2 TD’s—both to Junior TE Kenyon Sadiq, a one interception. On the ground Senior RB Noah Whittington and Freshman Jordon Davison combined for 154 of the team’s 179 yards rushing on 32 carries and a TD each to go along with a 1 yard TD run by Senior LB Bryce Boettcher. For USC, Junior QB Jayden Maiava was 25-of-43 for 306 yards, 3 TD’s, and 2 interceptions with Junior WR Makai Lemon catching two of those TD’s while also throwing that one to Freshman WR Tanook Hines with Senior TE Lake McRee being the recipient of Maiava’s third. Hines and Junior WR Ja’kobi Lane led the team with six catches each for a combined 249 yards. The Trojans never gained much traction in their ground game other than trying to keep the defense honest. Freshman RB King Miller led the way with 15 carries for 30 of the team’s 52 total rushing yards without a TD. With a win against their cross town rival UCLA in the Coliseum this next Saturday the Trojans would finish the season at 9-3, certainly better than last year’s 7-6 season but not as good as Riley’s first when he went 11-3. A win this next Saturday on the road at Husky Stadium would give the Ducks an 11-1 regular season record, just one shy of last year’s undefeated Big Ten Championship run.
Washington at UCLA
After losing to a Wisconsin team that had dropped every Big Ten game they hosted this year up until they beat Washington, I went into this thinking that the Bruins had a reasonable chance of winning this game, especially since the Huskies had only won just once in the Rose Bowl in thirty years. And who knows how it would have turned out had UCLA not fumbled the ball four times, thrown an interception, dropped a sure TD pass, and botched a fake field goal. Add to that an early exit to their starting QB Nico Iamaleava due to injury and a Husky QB Demond Williams who threw for two TD’s and ran for two more and you end up with a 48-14 result. With the talk of UCLA moving their football games out of the Coliseum and over to SoFi and the fact that their next and last football game of 2025 will be against their cross town rivals in the Coliseum, the blowout loss to Washington seemed like a sad way to end their forty plus year stay at the Rose Bowl. Ben Bolch for the Los Angeles Times said it this way; “The dense clouds that hovered over the Rose Bowl three hours before kickoff couldn’t keep the sun from peeking through to illuminate the nearby San Gabriel Mountains. It was as if the football gods wanted to showcase the majestic beauty of the place one last time, in case this really was farewell. What happened next could not conjure the same sort of sentimentality. In what might have been UCLA’s last game at the Rose Bowl after 43 years of calling the place home, the Bruins unfurled the kind of showing that no one would ever want to relive or put in a scrapbook, much less market as part of a future plan at another stadium. If this was goodbye, it was a sad sendoff.”
For the Bruins, Sophomore QB Nico Iamaleava connected on 16-of-26 for 69 yards without a TD or an interception while also rushing 5 five times for 16 yards. His backup, Sophomore QB Luke Duncan was 5-of-11 for 81 yards, 1 TD to Junior WR Mikey Matthews and no interceptions. On the ground, UCLA collectively rushed 22 times for 57 yards. For Washington, Sophomore QB Demond Williams Jr. was 17-of-26 for 213 yards, 2 TD’s, and 1 interception in addition to rushing 6 times for 56 yards and 2 more TD’s. It was Freshman WR Dezmen Roebuck and Sophomore TE Decker DeGraaf who hauled in one of those TD’s each while accounting for 142 of the team’s total receiving yards in the air. On the ground and in very limited duty Senior RB Jonah Coleman picked up 1 TD on 4 rushing attempts with Sophomore RB Adam Mohammed leading the way while accounting for 108 of the team’s 212 yard total on 21 carries to go along with 2 additional rushing TD’s. Washington led in first downs, 25-to-10; picked up their 4th down conversion attempts 67% of the time compared to the Bruins who were 0-for-3; had 200+ more yards of total offense, 426-to-207; and possession of the ball for nine more minutes along with fewer penalties and fewer turnovers. This coming Saturday, in the last regular season game for both of these teams, Washington heads back home to host the Ducks while the Bruins will take a 20 minute drive southwest on the team bus to the LA Memorial Coliseum—USC’s home turf.