Dan Weber PE.com
EUGENE, ORE. – Now what?
Pete Carroll had his best coach’s answer for that one.
“Next week,” Carroll said after the ninth-ranked Trojans lost a second Pac-10 game to fall to 3-2 in the conference and no better than fourth Saturday after losing at Oregon, 24-17.
“You guys can ask me a thousand times,” Carroll said, “but the answer is always the same. We just have to get back on track and look forward to the game next week.”
That’s all stand-in quarterback Mark Sanchez said he was thinking about, although admitting he needed to see the film on this one to know exactly what happened here.
“We’re coming back home next week,” said Sanchez, noting how his life had gone. “Last week, I was a hero, this week, I’m a zero.”
Just one way to go now, Sanchez said, “We have to bounce back against Oregon State. All we can do is clear up the mistakes we made in this game. I can’t look any farther than that.”
Senior linebacker Keith Rivers wasn’t about to admit the going is awfully difficult from here on out.
“A loss is never cool,” Rivers said. “We just have to start again strong and finish the rest of our ball games.”
Oregon nose tackle Jeremy Gibbs told USC offensive tackle Drew Radovich what to do as the pair embraced at the end of the game.
“Go on out and take care of business the rest of the year,” Gibbs told him.
“We will,” Radovich replied.
“We’ve got to respond,” said Patrick Turner after a sparkling performance that went for naught. “Another hard week of practice. That’s all you can do.”
Sam Baker, wincing as he maneuvered his damaged hamstring to his locker, said it as he always does — in as few words as possible.
“Bounce back,” he said.
Then he had a second thought about what it was that was killing this team. And what has to stop.
“You just gotta execute,” he said. “And you can’t get field goals when you need touchdowns. We just can’t let someone else win.”
John David Booty, who might return at quarterback next week, was on the same page.
“We’ve got to stop beating ourselves,” he said. “It’s very difficult to do this. A lot of guys don’t understand. This game is hard.”
And the team that for so long has aimed to play quicker than anybody it plays, must not have its coach saying something like Carroll said afterward.
“They made it quicker than we wanted to handle there for a while with that tempo,” Carroll said of the no-huddle, high-powered Ducks.
Source: scfootball.blogspot.com
