After a season of ups and downs and wild endings, Pac-12 football is right back to where it all began. On the receiving game, Stanford has over 350 receiving yards this season thanks to three players.
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The No. 7 Stanford Cardinal (10-2) will travel to take on the No. 24 Southern California Trojans (8-4) this week in a huge matchup. Kevin Hogan leads the Stanford offense with 2500 yards, 23 touchdowns, and 7 interceptions. McCaffrey rushed for 1,640 yards, seven touchdowns, 400 receiving yards, and three touchdowns in the receiving game.
The Pac-12 championship Saturday against USC will be Stanford’s 13th game. USC needed to win that game to get into the conference championship, and they dominated the Bruins. Cody Kessler put up 175 yards and two TDs through the air.
The Castle Rock, Colorado, native amassed a nation-best and Pac-12-record 3,035 all-purpose yards during the regular season. USC also has an RB by committee in Justin Davis, Ronald Jones III, and Tre Madden, who make the running game risky. JuJu Smith-Schuster is the leading receiver for USC with 1302 yards and 10 touchdowns.
Stanford won 41-31 on September 19th.
The first-team selections were McCaffrey as a tailback and return specialist, left guard Joshua Garnett, left tackle Kyle Murphy, tight end Austin Hooper, defensive lineman Azziz Shittu and linebacker Blake Martinez. This was a back and fourth game, with USC leading late in the third quarter.
Remarkably, USC is winless (0-2 SU) in games where it wins the turnover battle, yet undefeated (5-0 SU) when losing the turnover battle.
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It’s always absurdly hard to beat the same team twice in one season (except UCLA, for reasons that remain mysterious to me but I’ll accept all the same), particularly with USC, which has enough superstar talent to keep things interesting even when the team schematically isn’t playing up to its standard. The underdog is 4-0 ATS in these two teams last 4 meetings. Stanford has one of the better rushing attacks in the country, but USC has a top 30-rush defense.
