LOS ANGELES -- Last week, No. 17 USC’s BCS National Championship hopes burned to ashes in the scorching Arizona sun with a 39-36 upset by the Wildcats. Tonight, the Trojans’ Rose Bowl odds were crippled on a cool Los Angeles night as Lane Kiffin’s team fell to No. 4 Oregon 62-51.

“Unfortunately, we shot ourselves in the foot,” Kiffin said after the loss. “The game comes down to three offensive possessions.”

The three drives Kiffin referred to all occurred in the first half. On the Trojans’ first drive, they picked up a field goal after Oregon scored a touchdown instead of scoring seven. The second, quarterback Matt Barkley threw a pick in the end zone while trying to find Biletnikoff frontrunner Marqise Lee, who was seemingly held with no whistle. Shockingly, Lee was not pleased with the non-call.

“Great defense, thought it was a hold,” Lee asserted, after which Kiffin recommended Lee “stop with the ‘great defense.’ ”

“He was holding, yes. The ref didn’t see it, but you just gotta continue to play from there,” Lee added, who turned in 408 all-purpose yards including a Pac-12 record 251 kickoff return yards.

On the third possession, Lee fumbled in the red zone at the first half’s end. At the very least, a field goal would have made the game within one score before USC started the second half with the ball.

“Obviously, that can be a big difference there,” Kiffin concluded.

The game could have dramatically shifted in the fourth quarter, when kicker Andre Heidari bounced an onside kick over an Oregon defender and into a sliding Nickell Robey’s arms. But as he grabbed the game-changing ball, he was out of bounds. Even a second look by the replay officials confirmed USC’s chances as dead.

Despite the miscues, the Trojan offense was good --great, even. The ground game starring Silas Redd and Curtis McNeal gained 136 yards on 26 carries in addition to Barkley and Lee’s strong days. But unlike the past games this season, the other side of the ball was USC’s undoing.

The Ducks methodically eviscerated USC’s defense, racking up 730 yards, the most any opponent has compiled against USC. The 62 points scored by Chip Kelly’s Oregon were the most accumulated by a Trojan opponent ever, besting the 54 points Stanford scored last season -- and that sum came after three overtime periods. Senior Oregon tailback Kenjon Barner ran for 321 yards on 38 carries and five touchdowns. The 321 rushing yards are more than the total fellow Pac-12 school Washington State has ran for all season.

Redshirt freshman quarterback Marcus Mariota made few, if any, errors in the first big road test of his career, completing 20 of 23 passes for four scores and no interceptions.

“If you have back-to-back games like that, with over 600 yards, we got to look at what we’re doing,” Kiffin said regarding a change in defensive philosophy. “That’s not real sound, and that’s not where we want to be.”

The Trojans did improve in areas in which they struggled. For one, they only drew three penalties for 25 yards and converted 8 of 13 third downs.

Barkley threw for 484 yards in a record-breaking performance as well as five touchdowns, but it was not enough to notch a win. Though Rose Bowl dreams are almost gone, the senior still has plans to complete his “unfinished business.”

“We still got a lot football left, and this season is not over” Barkley said, yet he acknowledged the team’s shortcomings.

“You never want three losses in the beginning of November, but at this point in the season, our focus is on Arizona State and Arizona St. only.”

Barkley wasn’t to blame tonight, but how much does the coaching staff take, not just for a loss against the conference’s best team, but also for the preseason No. 1 team now with three losses?

“All of it,” Kiffin readily stated. “That’s what you do as coaches.

“And today, we screwed up. There’s things I could have done better in the game. There’s better situations I could have called, better plays.”

The most curious of decisions came at the beginning fourth quarter when the game was still in reach. With the score at 48-38, the Trojans had a three-and-out, resulting in a fourth-and-6 at their own 42. Instead of attempting to convert fourth down, USC opted to punt, pinning Oregon at its 15-yard line. The Ducks scored 12 plays and 4:56 later.

“We just kept feeling that we’d make a stop -- throw us the ball again like he did earlier to [linebacker] Lamar [Dawson] -- and something would happen,” Kiffin said in defense of his controversial decision. “Either we’d make a play or they’d screw up on offense. I thought we were going to win the game all the way until the last drive.”

Though the players ultimately control the game’s events, even in a tough loss at home, Kiffin was proud of how hard his team played until the clock read double zero.

“As I watched the end of the game, as Trojan fans, who won’t be happy with the outcome like none of us are,” Kiffin said, “I pointed to the second-to-the-last play of the game with Robert on that play. The game’s over, we can’t win, and the effort that he plays -- in probably his 80th snap of the game -- speaks a lot of these kids.”

But to complete the “unfinished business” everyone imagined -- a BCS title, restoring glory to Southland -- the effort was not enough.

Note: The road to regain the Pac-12 South lead and a bid in the conference championship game starts next week against Arizona St. at the Coliseum. To ensure a chance to (probably) re-play Oregon in the title game, USC must defeat Arizona St. at home and UCLA at the Rose Bowl.

 

Reach Senior Sports Editor Will Robinson here. Follow him here.