Trojans played follow the leader — Matt Barkley

From Honolulu

I was standing in a corner of an emptied Aloha Stadium field late Thursday, a raucous USC football opener finally gone quiet, when a voice boomed through the night.

It was a deep voice, surely belonging to a middle-age man, maybe one of the coaches, maybe a nutty fan, or maybe just somebody unfortunate enough to have a collection of rocks in his mouth.

“ Trojans fight on!” the gravelly voice screamed, and when I turned to check out the source, I was nearly steamrollered by the last Trojan you would ever expect to be growling like that.

It was Matt Barkley, sprinting into the locker room, shouting to a handful of fans as if there were thousands, and that sort of made it official.

The kid is not a kid anymore. If we didn’t learn anything else from USC’s 49-36 victory over Hawaii, we learned that.

After spending his freshman season as Pete Carroll’s mascot, the kid has become Lane Kiffin’s quarterback. After being prematurely treated like a star leader, the kid has apparently learned to play like one.

“I told you guys I had grown a lot since last year,” Barkley said, his big grin wiping away memories of last year’s forced smiles.

OK, this was only Hawaii. Agreed, he was playing against smaller, slower kids whose dark green jerseys often seemed to be swallowed by USC’s giant white.

But still. Even against a defense of blocking dummies, Barkley’s performance would have raised sun-baked eyebrows.

He threw five touchdown passes, tying a school record. He threw only two bad passes among 23 attempts, with the other three misses caused by two drops and an intentional throw out of bounds.

He had zero interceptions, zero fumbles, one sack, and a ton of perspective on what this all means.

“After the things that happened this off-season, tonight was huge,” Barkley said. “We can’t let someone else determine how we play. We have to set the tone ourselves.”

Did you hear the audibles? Barkley was changing the plays from the first snap of the game, confidently directing players around formations into spots that worked.

Could you feel the rhythm? He connected on his first seven passes, and every time the Trojans needed another lift, he ran off another string, including four completions in five attempts in the Trojans’ most important scoring drive late in the first half.

He threw on the run, over the top, across the field, into spots where Trojans made diving catches; witness Rhett Ellison’s six-yard touchdown grab. Heck, Barkley even threw touchdown passes to guys who had no idea what they were supposed to be doing.

Ronald Johnson’s one-yard touchdown catch at the end of the first quarter?

Said Johnson: “He changed the play, but I got the wrong signal, I didn’t know what was happening, but he still found me.”

Said Barkley, chuckling: “Oh well.”

More than anything Thursday, it seemed that Barkley found himself, a leaner and smarter quarterback, a kid who no longer needs the praise of a coach to prop him up.

You know the coach. Carroll spent last fall acting as if he were Barkley’s best friend, but it turns out he was his worst enemy. Carroll coddled him instead of pushing him. He praised him instead of teaching him.

Always compete? Not if you were Matt Barkley, who was never allowed to be challenged for his shaky spot.

In his final four games last season, Barkley had seven interceptions and five touchdown passes, and the public disillusionment was complete. Maybe this kid wasn’t really that good. As long as Carroll was coach, maybe we’d never find out.

Enter Kiffin, who last season turned Tennessee quarterback Jonathan Crompton from a bust into an NFL fifth-round draft pick. This winter he immediately began working on his new protégé, ordering Barkley to lose weight and hit the weights and be accountable.

So accountable, in fact, that Kiffin treated Barkley’s career performance on national TV as if it were just another Tuesday at Howard Jones field.

“Matt did fine,” Kiffin said. “We had a lot of guys on offense do well. That’s what we expected.”

Of course, Kiffin isn’t very happy about anything right now. On Friday morning before USC traveled back to Los Angeles, he was seen walking to the hotel pool in his coaching shorts and sweaty long-sleeve T-shirt carrying a box lunch, muttering about those 588 yards of holes in his defense.

“No, sure, it was a good step for Matt,” Kiffin allowed. “But for us to win, that’s going to have to continue.”

Here’s guessing it will. From the moment he led the Trojans’ offense on the field through the late-afternoon heat, barking and directing even their pregame drills, it was obvious that this is a different quarterback in a different season.

“That guy there, he’s the man,” Johnson said late Thursday night, pointing over to where Barkley was grinning through postgame interviews.

We’ve heard that before. But maybe now, we should listen.

bill.plaschke@latimes.com

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