Sunday, Dec. 05, 2010

Morris: USC’s loss is just part of the process

ATLANTA

SOUTH CAROLINA came a long way as a football program this season. USC still has a long, long way to go.

It defeated Georgia, Tennessee and Florida for the first time in a season. It took down a No. 1-ranked team in Alabama. It won the SEC East Division and it ended a 40-year hex against Clemson with back-to-back wins.

There is no way to take away from one of the grand seasons in USC history. In the end, though, USC was happy to be in Atlanta for the SEC Championship Game. It ran into an Auburn team that would only be happy with a win in the championship game.

Auburn administered a beating of USC on the front porch, inside the woodshed and behind it. Steve Spurrier said afterward if the teams played each other 10 times, Auburn probably would win nine. I am not sure USC would not win once.

This was the kind of beat down Spurrier’s Florida teams used to put on conference opponents. Spurrier once used to see dejected looks on sidelines, but seldom on his own like late in Saturday’s debacle.

Give him credit, Spurrier broke the game down pretty well afterward.

“We didn’t do a lot of things well today, offensively, defensively,” he said in a mild understatement, “and special teams we didn’t do much, either.”

That about covers it.

You know when Spurrier orders his team to boot a meaningless field goal — down by five touchdowns midway through the fourth quarter — that this was a lost cause. Spencer Lanning’s 33-yard field goal meant USC’s offense was not shut out in the second half, nothing more.

The defense was worse than the offense. Auburn rolled up 28 first downs and 589 yards of offense. USC never found an answer for Cam Newton, who effectively cleared out space on his mantle for the Heisman Trophy he will win next week.

Newton passed for four touchdowns and ran for two more. He was Houdini, escaping whenever USC had him trapped in the backfield. He also was Superman, throwing bullet passes to the receiver of his choosing. He accounted for 408 yards of offense.

So complete was Newton’s performance, he even stopped at one point in the fourth quarter to place a hat back on an official’s head. It was the same manner in which he handed USC its hat.

Since Spurrier mentioned special teams, it is worth pointing out the normally reliable Lanning missed a pair of field goal attempts. Really, it would not have mattered. Lanning could have connected on both field goals and USC still would have lost by a considerable margin.

USC was no match for an Auburn team that will play for the national championship. The 39-point difference in the game’s score probably underscored the disparity between the strength in the SEC West and that of the SEC East this season. Maybe the league should have taken the suggestion to send the West’s two best teams to the title game.

But that would have prevented USC from seeing how far it still has to go to be a championship club.

“We haven’t reached the top yet. We’ve still got a lot of work to do,” USC receiver Tori Gurley said. “We’re barely scratching the surface of greatness.”

Fortunately, USC has a chance to turn a good season into a great one with a bowl victory. Such a win would do a couple of things for the program. First, it would match the 1984 club with a program-record 10 wins. It also would show how far the program advanced from the humbling loss last season to Connecticut in the Papajohns.com Bowl.

Through the entire offseason, Spurrier reminded his team and USC fans of the bitter taste that loss left in his mouth. It became a rallying point for his team. So, too, should Saturday’s loss serve as motivation for this program to get better.

“We’ve got to learn from it,” said Ellis Johnson, USC’s assistant head coach for defense. “I don’t want any of them to be ashamed. I don’t want any of them to feel like they haven’t accomplished something great. I really think they have.

“If you go back, we probably played over our heads more times than we played poorly. I think what these bunch of kids accomplished should never be minimized. I think it should be recognized. But they better learn from a performance like this because if you don’t, you’re going to have more days like this.”

It is a building process for USC. The program has taken several baby steps over Spurrier’s first six seasons. It took a few giant steps this season toward becoming the kind of championship program he so desires for USC and its fans.

USC accomplished a great deal by reaching Atlanta. Maybe by the time it returns for the title game, USC will be in better position to win it.

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