'Finish' Is Keyword for USC Football in 2015 Season

As is often the case with veterans, linebacker Anthony Sarao left his USC football teammates with some words of wisdom following the season finale, a 45-42 Trojans win over the Nebraska Cornhuskers on Dec. 27—or, more accurately, one word of wisdom.

“If you really think about our team and this season, finish has been the word in our locker room,” Sarao said. “That’s been the story of our team: Arizona State, we didn’t finish. Utah, we didn’t finish.”

Those losses to which Sarao referred both came on the final possession of each game. Had USC closed out either contest successfully, it would have faced Oregon in the Trojans’ first-ever Pac-12 Championship Game appearance.

“It took until the last game for our team to come together and finish, and it's great to see," Sarao said. 

He added that the positive trend from the Holiday Bowl should "roll over into the next year." 

Parlaying USC’s successful close of its last game of 2014 into the 2015 season “will be a huge focus…throughout this entire offseason,” according to head coach Steve Sarkisian.

“The one consistent we can get out of this: [If] we want to be a championship-caliber football team, we have to be better in the fourth quarter,” Sarkisian said.

Sarkisian was an assistant coach on the last championship-winning USC team. The 2008 Trojans claimed the conference title with an overall, fourth-quarter edge of 105-32.

When the 2004 USC team won the program’s last national championship, it outscored opponents 110-26 in final frames.

This year’s Trojans were on the wrong side of a combined 86-72 fourth-quarter disparity.

Opponent	Fourth-Quarter Scoring	Result, Final Score
Fresno State	0-0	W, 52-13
Stanford	USC 3, Stanford 0	W, 13-10
Boston College	USC 14, Boston College 10	L, 37-31
Oregon State	USC 14, Oregon State 0	W, 35-10
Arizona State	Arizona State 20, USC 14	L, 38-34
Arizona	Arizona 13, USC 0	W, 28-26
Colorado	Colorado 7, USC 0	W, 56-28
Utah	7-7	L, 24-21
Washington State	7-7	W, 44-17
Cal	Cal 14, USC 7	W, 38-30
UCLA	USC 6, UCLA 0	L, 38-20
Notre Dame	0-0	W, 49-14
Nebraska	Nebraska 8, USC 0	W, 45-42

However, the fourth quarter was merely the culmination of a trend. Season-long point totals show a quarter-by-quarter regression: from USC advantages of 167-53 in first quarters, to 117-96 in the second, to 110-92 in the third and the fourth-quarter disadvantage.

The decline suggests USC's sanction-thinned roster did indeed impact the Trojans over the course of games, though Sarkisian did not offer this conclusion. 

"Maybe there’s a sense of maybe not being quite as aggressive in the fourth," he said. "Maybe we’re just not doing a well enough job of getting our players to understand some of the adjustments we’re making, so we’re not getting the execution we want."

Execution is critical in end-of-game situations, and the Trojans showed improvement to this end in the Holiday Bowl. For example, wide receiver Nelson Agholor was on the field for Nebraska’s final heave, giving USC an additional player with a nose for the ball to attack.

And attack he did, batting down the Cornhuskers’ Hail Mary to avoid a repeat of the Arizona State finish.

But complicating the process of remedying its fourth-quarter woes is that the nature of these struggles varied from game to game.

“We have to be better offensively in our ability to score points,” Sarkisian said. “And we have to be better defensively at getting those critical stops at the most critical moments.”

Scoreless stretches late made otherwise dominant games against Arizona, Cal and Nebraska a bit too close for the Trojans' comfort. USC also failed to capitalize on opportunities in fourth quarters, such as Agholor's fourth-down run at Utah that would have likely iced a win. 

But then, there was the Arizona State game, in which the Trojans scored twice and amassed 150 yards of offense. The failure of that game was giving up 20 points, 13 of which came in all of 42 combined seconds.

Since the struggles were all-encompassing, so too will be how the USC coaching staff addresses them in preparation for next year. 

“It won’t just be physically, it won’t just be emotional,” Sarkisian said. “It will also be tactical.”

Quotes obtained firsthand unless otherwise cited. Statistics courtesy of CFBstats.com.