A knockout before the Victory Bell

Trojans shake off poor start, dominate Bruins to win rivalry game

- RYAN KARTJE

MATAI TAGOA'I (44) and the USC defense gave up three or fewer points after halftime for the third time in four games with a second-half shutout Saturday night.

In the final days of his fourth season at USC, with only pride left to play for and a bitter rival left to beat, Trojans coach Lincoln Riley talked to his team about "paving the road." One day when USC was on top of the college football world again, Riley assured them they'd look back on this season and understand the part they played.

Where that road leads under Riley, no one is quite sure. Nor can anyone say for certain, after a 9-3 finish, how much closer, if at all, he is to making USC the “mecca” he imagined more than four years ago.

But in a season of ups and downs, USC ended not just on a high note, but an especially fitting one in a 29-10 victory over rival UCLA.

"We're a better team, a better program now than we were 12 months ago,” Riley declared Saturday. “I think this team, some of the resilience we showed throughout the year... we won tough games. We were able to win games in a lot of different ways. The way we played in the second half, really throughout the entire season, there's just so, so much to build on.”

For UCLA, this tumultuous season had been more about tearing things down. The Bruins fired coach DeShaun Foster after just three games and may say goodbye to the iconic stadium where they've played for 43 years.

Behind interim coach Tim Skipper, the Bruins showed some signs of life midseason. They won three games in a row, including a stunning upset of Penn State at the Rose Bowl.

But that momentum quickly faded, as UCLA lost five straight to finish the season 6 "These guys never quit, never quit," Skipper said.