Off to Running Start

In the midst of Pete Carroll’s first postgame news conference, after his first victory as USC’s head football coach, the USC band came marching through the Coliseum tunnel. The sounds of “Conquest” poured through two walls and a closed door to drown out his comments in the interview room.

“How many times do they play that song?” Carroll asked. “Goll-eee. They just keep playing it.”

If Carroll plans to stick around here awhile, he’d better get used to it. “Conquest” is the soundtrack to success at USC. They play it after touchdowns. They play it after victories.

In football parlance, the band got their reps in Saturday, thanks to a 21-10 Trojan toppling of San Jose State.

Carroll gave himself a C-plus grade for his debut, although that had as much to do with some sideline snafus as it did with his coaching. He wanders so far between plays that you fear he’s going to go beyond the range of his wireless headset or get the Trojans flagged for an illegal participation penalty.

“It’s like he wants to be on the field playing with us,” linebacker Mike Pollard said.

That attitude works for everyone who actually belongs on the field as well.

“Everybody trusts each other,” defensive end Lonnie Ford said.

If the players so much as think everything’s better, that their atmosphere and chances of winning have improved, then things have improved.

This team could be pretty good. Not Pacific 10-championship good. But bowl-game good, which is more than could be said the past two seasons.

At times the last couple of years of the Paul Hackett era seemed like one continuous fire alarm, a non-stop calamity of chaos and confusion.

There wasn’t that prevailing sense of disorganization Saturday. The Trojans felt in control of the game after their second possession.

If there was anything missing it was the lack of a hardcore, Mortal Kombat-style finishing move.

The offense couldn’t get that one last score to put the game completely out of reach.

The defense couldn’t maintain its shutout, giving up a fourth-quarter touchdown. (They weren’t accountable for San Jose State’s first score, a 37-yard field goal after a Carson Palmer pass was intercepted and returned to the Trojans’ 20.)

“I’m disappointed that we weren’t able to control the game like we’d like to have,” Carroll said. “And we made some penalty mistakes that were substantial. But all in all, we played very hard.”

Perhaps it’s too much to expect a team to go from crisis-management mode to killer instinct so suddenly.

For now, Trojan fans should just be grateful for what went right. The offense stuck to its game plan and moved the ball effectively. The defense made the right adjustments.

“It’s a new beginning,” tailback Sultan McCullough said.

All the talk in the off-season was Norm Chow this and Carson Palmer that. The passing guru and the quarterback.

But the key to the Trojans’ offense was and is McCullough. He wasn’t utilized to his full capacity last season because the Trojans kept falling behind big and had to throw the ball to catch up. But he still rushed for 1,163 yards, including gains of 59, 46, 51 and 35 yards. Not only is he the Trojans’ most dependable option, he has been their most reliable big-gain guy.

Chow’s offense works differently in that it sets up the run with the pass. It seemed as if there was a receiver open down the middle every time Palmer dropped back, and he connected on 21 of 28 passes.

After dinking the Spartans with short passes, the Trojans gave the ball to McCullough and he shredded the defense. He rushed for 167 yards and scored all three USC touchdowns.

That takes a lot of the burden off Palmer’s shoulder pads. He joked even Chow could complete the passes he threw Saturday.

“I just had to get the ball to Sultan and throw it to the receivers,” Palmer said.

On defense, the Trojans fared better when Carroll kept it simple. He called a lot of blitzes and stunts at the outset, and Deonce Whitaker began the game by running roughshod through the middle, through the holes vacated by departed Trojan linebackers Zeke Moreno and Markus Steele. He had 40 yards in the first quarter. But he picked up only 25 more the rest of the way and had trouble getting past the defensive line.

“Once we settled down and played a lot more base defense, it was obvious that we could play straight-up and contain the running game,” Carroll said.

USC’s shaky kicking game wasn’t tested and San Jose State didn’t have much of a pass rush, so there are two unanswered questions about USC right there.

We’ll see how this turns out. I still remember Hackett running into the tunnel, flashing the victory sign after he beat Purdue in his debut. He looked like the right thing and Palmer looked like a future Heisman Trophy winner that day.

But Carroll is adapting quickly to his first major college head-coaching job. That tune he whistled as he left the news conference?

It was “Conquest.”

J.A. Adande can be reached at [email protected]