How USC is trying to 'move on' from Utah win and 'focus on being uncomfortable' in preparing for Washington

USC hasn't been the same team on the road under Clay Helton. Did the team learn any lessons after its latest loss?

For all the electricity from USC’s win last week versus Utah, the team was a bit subdued in discussing it afterward.

Maybe they were drained after a short week and coming off a loss. Maybe the presence of Reggie Bush and Urban Meyer evoked mixed feelings within. Or maybe, and really ideally, the setting was so similar to just two weeks prior that they recognized the need for a different mindset moving forward.

For the second time in three weeks, USC had pulled off an upset at home against a Pac-12 team with a road trip lurking. Only its next road opponent beat its last one by 26 points, in the same stadium the Trojans lost in no less.

“Football’s an interesting game,” center Brett Neilon said as he exited the Coliseum last Friday. “Obviously being at home is a huge plus for us. … (But) we got to forget about this win come tomorrow. We need to move on.”

Onto Seattle. USC has won there before, just three years ago, although none of its starters from then remain. Only a few players even appeared in the last meeting with Washington. But this team does have a fair amount of road experience. It just isn’t particularly memorable.

The Trojans went 2-4 on the road last year, losing three of those games by double digits. They faced four ranked opponents on the road in 2017 and lost to three of them, twice in blowouts. In Clay Helton’s four years as the head coach, USC is 22-3 in the Coliseum and 12-15 out of it.

Only one of those dozen road wins came as an underdog -- 2016 versus Washington.  

Helton, who warned his team repeatedly in the buildup to BYU that it was a trap game, has again been very specific in his messaging as his team prepares to leave town again. The Trojans won’t overlook the Huskies -- they opened as an 8.5 favorite -- the way they might have the Cougars, but other elements figure to be a factor up north. 

For starters, Husky Stadium will be louder. After having insufficient crowd noise in the week of prep for BYU, USC had its speakers replaced and used them liberally throughout its Tuesday's practice.

“You have to make yourself uncomfortable, that's what coach has been talking about to us,” offensive lineman Jalen McKenzie said. “You are getting ready to go into an uncomfortable environment where nobody likes you. Everybody is going to say negative things about you and it's going to be loud. You're going to be uncomfortable, it might be raining a little bit. So throughout the week you have to focus on being uncomfortable and playing with that mindset that you are going somewhere to take a win from somebody else in their own house.

“It's just focusing on making yourself uncomfortable and getting ready for that uncomfortable environment to still be able to perform at the highest level.”

USC hasn’t approached its highest level on the road in two years, with a team that was also led by a very different cast of characters. Neilon said the current one has to do a better job of dealing with distractions that are inherent with traveling.

“Missing class on a Thursday and then worrying about that, and then busing to LAX, rushing, flying, it’s a whole ordeal,” he said. “We just got to focus on the football game instead of all that. There’s a lot of clutter in the travel. 

"We just got to play our football no matter where it is."