Saturday night’s 2024 Victory Bell edition, a gutsy 19-13 conquest at the expense of the archrival Bruins, certainly wasn’t a game for the ages, yet for this lost USC Trojans season, perhaps a turning point in Lincoln Riley’s Trojan tenure given how the victory was scrapped, clawed and fought for.
USC Trojans Vs. UCLA Bruins
With exactly nine minutes left to play, the Trojans found themselves infamously (see 2006 Victory Bell) down 13-9 as the Bruins had scored the game’s previous 10 points and just got themselves out from the danger of their own 1-yard line to the 26 on a gorgeous deep fade from Ethan Garbers to Trojan nuisance J. Michael Sturdivant. At that moment, with precisely 540 seconds to play, ESPN gave UCLA a 74% chance to win. After all, these Trojans have repeatedly wilted in identical situations to the likes of Michigan, Minnesota, Maryland, and Washington.
But on a night epitomized with perplexing red zone play calling by Lincoln Riley to the tune of halfback dives and low percentage fades, along with an uneven performance from Jayden Maiava, resulting in a meager three field goals on three drives that were 1st & Goal from at or inside UCLA’s five yard-line, along with repeatedly blown short fields in the second half, it was the Trojans defense that finally stood tall and chose to seize victory with physicality, toughness and swagger.
From that nine-minute mark, the Bruins had 11 offensive plays across three different possessions that resulted in just seven total yards. Easton Mascarenas-Arnold sacked Garbers to eliminate the first of that three-possession sequence. The defense was spectacularly stout on consecutive no-gain stuffs and 3rd & 1 along with 4th & 1, on a Keegan Jones power run play followed by a Garbers attempted quarterback sneak. Furthermore, Sam Greene dominantly shed his block and knocked down Garbers forcing an incomplete pass to end the game’s final UCLA possession on 4th & 10.
While Maiava is still a work in progress – he showed flashes of brilliance, including a beautiful 64-yard-deep ball to Makai Lemon and a precise 26-yard seam route dart to Lake McRee in the second quarter along with two poised conversion completions to Kyron Hudson – he had a pedestrian 54% completion rate on 35 attempts with several delayed reads and missed open targets. While the curious case of Riley continues to be a mystery – the Oklahoma version of offensive innovation, creativity, and boldness has yet to emerge in Los Angeles, the Trojan Family was been desperate to witness an inflection point in the Riley era over the past twelve months.
We first thought it was last year’s Holiday Bowl and Miller Moss’ dramatic arrival into the USC record books. We then thought it was the seemingly tectonic triumph over LSU in the season opener, the Trojans first AP top 15 victory since 2017. But that moment of truth as a building block back into college football’s ranks of the elite, could very well have been the final nine minutes of the 2024 Victory Bell when the Trojans finally exorcised their competitiveness demons.
