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USC’s defense shuts door on UCLA in crunch-time rivalry win

Running back Quinten Joyner #0 of the USC Trojans is tackled for a loss of yards by linebacker Carson Schwesinger #49 of the UCLA Bruins in the first half of a NCAA Football game at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena on Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Orange County Register/ SCNG)

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LOS ANGELES — D’Anton Lynn’s best and worst qualities, Danielle Lynn’s jokes about her brother, are the same.

He could be incredibly – confoundingly – competitive.

He’s also incredibly – committedly – and competitive.

Publicly, he draws little attention to himself the 35-year-old now manning the defensive coordinator’s headset at USC. This week, he made little of his return to the Rose Bowl on Saturday.

But this was the same kid, once, who’d beg best-of-three and best-of-five of Danielle when they beat him in childhood games.

This was the same kid, once, who froze out best friend and high school teammate Breck Holman on the bus on the way to a state championship game because he’d beat him in a Madden game two days before.

This was the same man, who listened when Lincoln Riley came calling from across town in the offseason because Lynn quietly burned for the challenge of turning around a dilapidated defense.

And when USC’s defense officially slammed the door on UCLA Saturday night in a 19-13 win, his defense coming up with not one but two massive fourth-quarter fourth-down stops, Lynn pumped his fist on the sidelines and roared.

He smacked safety Akili Arnold’s chest in glee, Lynn’s hire last winter coming full circle on Saturday across the sideline from his former blue-and-gold, his defense providing the necessary formula to a late-game equation USC’s struggled to solve all season.

“I’m super proud of our guys,” Arnold said postgame, “and I think it was huge for us to give us that confidence again of, you know, ‘We’re really’ – to us – ‘the best team in the nation.’”

Lynn’s unit bent, sure. Ethan Garbers, the veteran quarterback who’d given USC fits in this same rivalry matchup last season, left his heart on Pasadena turf in a 20-of-29, 265-yard performance.

Bruins’ running back TJ Harden got going one too many times on first-half carries, finishing with 98 yards on 14 carries.

With USC up 16-13 and five minutes left, Lynn’s defense earned its shining moment, the kind of fourth-down look it had struggled to close all season. Needing a yard, Garbers took a snap and dove forward, digging his cleats into the turf and seemingly earning an inch of momentum.

Except for massive cardinal-and-gold bodies up front met him, driving him backward, standing him up until referees blew the play dead and USC’s sideline exploded with a turnover.

UCLA head coach DeShaun Foster and Garbers both noted postgame, they thought forward progress had been called early. Still, it was the topper on the defensive line’s best performance of the year, the front racking up three sacks and collapsing pockets against Garbers through four quarters.

“We were just, pretty awesome defensively,” Riley said postgame, in his opening statement. “We really were.”

Five months ago, Riley declared at the Big Ten media days in Indianapolis that USC intended to compete for Big Ten championships at the same podium where Foster offered up the much-maligned “We’re in LA” description of his UCLA program.

Their season had long slipped past those hopes, buried under a bevy of fourth-quarter collapses.

For weeks, with nothing left, Riley has preached the importance of a sudden three-game season: first Nebraska, then crosstown rival UCLA, then cross-country rival Notre Dame.

Check, on Nebraska. Check, on UCLA. Suddenly, the Trojans (6-5, 4-5 Big Ten) clinched bowl eligibility Saturday, a still-meaningful consolation prize, as the Bruins (4-6, 3-6 Big Ten) fell short themselves of a bowl game in head coach DeShaun Foster’s first year, meaningful in this night’s fourth-quarter flavor.

“For us to win one, especially in this fashion, playing as well defensively as we did, again, overcoming all that we did this week – we can write a book about this week alone,” Riley said postgame. “And just, we had a no-excuses attitude.”

About that book. Perhaps they’ll write this chapter of the rivalry in the years to come, the 94th installment of the clash of Los Angeles, as USC’s very own Flu Game.

On Tuesday, the program saw 27 players out with illness, as a virus swept through the roster and “half the staff,” as Riley put it.

At USC’s team meeting Friday night, Riley said, staff delivered the message that they’d wake up tomorrow and nobody would be sick.

“Period,” Riley said. “Like, nobody’s sick. So we healed ’em all, baby.”

Saturday night, however, did not quite play out as a storybook tale of perseverance, as USC had only themselves to blame for the same holes they found themselves prospering out of.

A 9-3 Trojans halftime advantage carried a stink of disappointment, as Riley broke out some baffling red-zone play-calling: three first-and-goal situations ended without a trip to the end zone, with star senior back Woody Marks receiving exactly one handoff in such series and goal-line fade after goal-line fade falling incomplete.

“Excited to get the win despite that,” Riley said postgame, of USC’s red-zone execution. “But we know that’s gonna have to get a whole lot better.”

USC came up empty-handed in the third quarter, despite starting the half with the ball at their 48-yard-line after three unsportsmanlike conduct penalties on UCLA as the programs mobbed into a slight skirmish entering halftime locker rooms.

The Bruins, conversely, came out with sudden life, as Garbers uncorked a 25-yard deep shot to J. Michael Sturdivant on their first drive of the second half and later dumped in a 10-yard screen to tight end Moliki Matavao for the game’s first touchdown.

USC redshirt sophomore quarterback Jayden Maiava, meanwhile, struggled to generate momentum for much of the night and got caught trying to do too much early in the fourth quarter.

Down 13-9 and facing either two-down territory or a long field goal, Maiava tried a 360-degree spin away from pressure on a third-and-nine, only to get brought down for a brutal 13-yard-loss by UCLA’s Oluwafemi Oladejo.

This, however, is simply who Maiava is, a born risk-taker who hasn’t flinched at his own mistakes through two USC starts.

After Riley dialed up an incomprehensively gutsy fourth-quarter call, a lateral to receiver Makai Lemon for a perfectly-placed 36-yard bomb to Kyron Hudson, Maiava again saw pressure incoming on a first-and-goal.

He could’ve tossed it away. He didn’t. On the move, dancing around the pocket like a bug trapped under a glass cup, he whizzed a cross-body strike to receiver Ja’Kobi Lane for the go-ahead touchdown.

“I mean, that’s just Jayden being Jayden,” receiver Kyron Hudson said.

He was him, and Lynn was Lynn, authoring two straight stops to ensure USC walked away from his old stomping grounds with the Victory Bell.

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