USC Suffers Heartbreaking Loss to Michigan in Big Ten Football Debut – Orange County Register

ANN ARBOR — The window was nearly closed, Michigan’s Makari Paige was closing fast, but Miller Moss was a man without fear. Despite the blows. Despite the bruises. Despite the ferocity with which he’d been knocked to the turf on the previous play. He turned and fired a third-and-16 rope to trusted 6-foot-4 receiver Ja’Kobi Lane, and time slowed with the liftoff of Lane’s skinny limbs.

The USC sophomore put the ball back on the ground, with a fourth-quarter touchdown that promised glory for the Big Ten, and held his arms horizontally, palms up, toward the suddenly vanished yellow stripe in the Big House.

What do you think about that?

For a moment in an eventual 27-24 loss, they were poised for one of the biggest wins in recent USC history. Despite a pulverized offensive line. Despite a third-quarter momentum-killing pick-six from Miller Moss. Despite a run defense battered by big plays.

“I thought we put ourselves in a position,” USC head coach Lincoln Riley told reporters after the game. “But you’ve got to finish.”

They didn’t collapse. But they couldn’t finish. The beginning of a Big Ten era ended the only way it could have, with a war in the trenches, the Michigan showdown capped by a fourth-and-1 try by the Wolverines with about 40 seconds left. And linebacker Mason Cobb arrived with a vengeance, choking out tenacious Michigan running back Kalel Mullings. But his tree-trunk legs gave way, and the ball was already over the plane.

Cobb pushed someone, a few seconds later. It didn’t matter. A show of physicality, too late.

USC, which is ranked 11th (2-1, 0-1 Big Ten), had faced the reigning national champion – hand-and-handAs linebacker Easton Mascarenas-Arnold put it after the game — a reality that, theoretically, should have inspired confidence in the program’s continued ascent. They were disappointed, as Riley said after the game, “but not defeated.” And yet the loss still stung with the ghosts of plays that could have been made, of chances that were still on the table, against an 18th-ranked Michigan program with virtually no hope of passing the ball and somehow winning a football game by exactly 32 passing yards.

“I don’t think so, they wanted it more than we did,” Mascarenas-Arnold said after the game. “It was a four-quarter battle as you saw.”

“But when it comes to big games like this, you have to execute. And kudos to Michigan, they executed better than we did.”

It was unlikely, to be honest, that USC was even in the game. They had exactly 3 yards of offense in the first half and went into the break down 14-3 on 53-yard and 41-yard touchdown gashes by Michigan’s Mullings and Donovan Edwards, respectively.

Runs up the gut didn’t work. Downfield attempts didn’t work. Screen-play spread-out tricks especially didn’t work. The offensive line was so brutal that USC yanked right guard Alani Noa for a stretch and completely reshuffled their front in the second half, moving former right tackle Mason Murphy to left tackle after benching starter Elijah Paige and sending redshirt freshman Tobias Raymond to right tackle for the biggest snaps of his young life. Michigan All-American Will Johnson sprung a route to stun Moss with that third-quarter pick-six to put Michigan up 20-10, and the disaster continued on the next drive, when Moss was brought down by Michigan wrecking ball Josaiah Stewart off the rim and lost a fumble that was recovered by Michigan’s Kenneth Grant.

But USC was playing with a bleeding heart, red uniforms fluttering across the grass in this sea of ​​yellow in Ann Arbor. As Stewart moved forward, running back Woody Marks — who had broken free earlier in the drive for a gain of 65 yards — charged behind him and slammed the ball back to let go, to get it back.

Riley was asked after the game about his confidence in his program’s ability to bounce back from the loss. The fight, Riley emphasized. He later deflected a question about Marks’ effort.

“The question earlier about why do I believe in the locker room – it plays out that way,” Riley said.

USC capped a big third-quarter drive with a Moss charge to wide-open Auburn transfer Jay Fair, and the defense put on bootstraps and held off the Wolverines’ offense for much of the second half. Linebacker Eric Gentry continued to play like his 6-foot-6 frame was on fire, forcing a fourth-quarter fumble from Michigan’s Edwards to set up the Moss-to-Lane score. And USC had plenty of hope.

The hope was fleeting. After another defensive stop, USC looked poised to run out the clock with just five minutes remaining. But they quickly went to a three-and-out, and two incompletions stopped the clock, and they used just 59 seconds of game time before giving the ball back to Michigan and introducing a new round of play-calling questions for Riley.