USC Brought Back More Than a Loss : Trojans: Larry Smith and his players took home a bit of the stormy weather and some dark memories from South Bend.

When the USC Trojans arrived in South Bend, Ind., last Thursday to play Notre Dame, they were greeted by the first snowstorm of the season and temperatures in the 30s.

On Friday, Coach Larry Smith noticed that Bill Schultz, one of his offensive linemen, was still shivering.

“Didn’t you thaw out yet?” Smith asked.

Said Schultz: “Oh, I slept with the window open last night because I wanted to get used to the weather.”

A week later, some players, walking around with colds and flu symptoms, still haven’t gotten the cold weather out of their systems.

Or the crushing memories of a demoralizing weekend.

They have practiced all week, struggling to get their bodies ready for Stanford Saturday at the Coliseum. But the biggest battle is to get their minds off last week’s 28-24 loss.

“Every time I think about it, it brings bad feelings,” USC linebacker Scott Ross said. “So, I don’t want to talk about it. Thinking about Notre Dame gives you a sick feeling in the stomach.

“It was a tough game. It was a good game, but I’ve tried to totally forget everything about it until next year. I’ll come back next year focusing on beating the Irish, but as of right now, I’m looking forward to the Rose Bowl.”

As far as Ross is concerned, there will be no letdown Saturday.

“What I want to do the most right now is get back on the field,” he said. “I wanted to get back on the field last Sunday just so I could feel better and do something.

“I want to win a game. And to feel better, we’re going to have to beat Stanford. I have something I have to prove to myself. I have a lot of built-up frustrations right now that I want to take out on the field.”

Smith admitted that he’s had as much trouble as he could ever remember changing mental gears, switching off the Notre Dame game and switching on film of Stanford.

He told his players in the locker room at Notre Dame to cry if they felt the need to get the feelings out. Monday, he followed his regular schedule, showing the Trojans the film of their last game, painful as it might have been.

“We looked at the film very quickly,” Smith said. “We didn’t dwell on it. Got it over with. We showed the offensive players only the offense. And we showed the defense only the defense. Got right into our Stanford scouting report and on out to practice. And I think that helped.”

Asked if he would have done anything differently, after watching the game film, Smith replied, “I would have liked to have had 12 or 13 guys on the field to tackle Tony Rice.”

The key to the game, as expected, was the ability of quarterback Rice to run the option against USC’s defense, No. 1 in the nation against the rush going in. It turned out to be the irresistible force against the movable object.

The Fighting Irish, led by Rice with 99 yards on the ground, amassed 266 net yards rushing with their option offense. Putting that into perspective, the Trojans had allowed only 220 yards on the ground all s eason going into the game.

“We tended to be a little bit too aggressive,” Ross said. “We were on our toes coming in for the dives. We hadn’t gone against a good run team until Notre Dame. Last year, we had 10 games to prepare for Notre Dame’s run. This year, we’ve been playing passing teams. We all had to switch gears. We were so used to a pass rush and taking guys down the middle (on passing routes). There were a few mistakes that the linebackers made that caused big plays.

“We’ll have it down for Arizona (on Nov. 11 at Tucson). That’s what I’m looking forward to. We’ll get another chance to go against the option against Arizona. But right now, I just want to get back on the field against Stanford and stuff their run.”

Smith believes that his team will be ready to do just that.

“I don’t think you can automatically expect everybody to bounce right back,” he said. “We’ve got to get back, but you don’t do that by automatically saying everything is fine. You’ve got to get back on the field and get a victory. That will get you back up. But the other guy isn’t going to cooperate. You’ve got to go out and earn it.”

Although there will be no national championship this year, the Trojans, who dropped from ninth to 10th in the rankings, remain unbeaten and on top in the Pacific 10 Conference, with an excellent chance of reaching the Rose Bowl for the third consecutive season.

“This is just like my freshman year,” said Ross, a junior. “We lost to Notre Dame. I got a chance to start, and we won four victories in a row. We got to go to the Rose Bowl and it changed our whole season around. It made it a good season. It got rid of all the bad things like losing to Michigan State (in the opener), smoothed all the rough spots out.

“So that’s what we’re looking for now. We can make this a great season. We need to win a Rose Bowl. We’ve been to them, but we need to win one.”

Smith also emphasized that the Trojans’ goal is to win a Rose Bowl game, after losing the last two.

“You’ve got to count your blessings and look at what you have achieved,” he said. “That’s our main thrust. Hey, we’re back in the Pac-10. A lot can be accomplished. We’ve got to put this behind us. But you just don’t shrug it off. It’s got to work it’s way out.”

One image from Saturday’s game will remain vivid for a while.

It was moments after the final gun. Smith entered a small room to meet the media. Sitting at a table in close quarters with a microphone in front of him, he waited while about 50 reporters and broadcasters filed in.

“Any questions?” he finally asked, obviously anxious to get it over with.

At that instant, the Notre Dame band emerged from a tunnel below the room and marched up to a gate where fans were waiting. Once there, they marched in place while playing the Notre Dame fight song.

The noise was so overwhelming, Smith and the gathered media were temporarily unable to hear one another.

So there Smith sat, forced to grit his teeth and listen to the Fighting Irish victory song one more time with the spotlight on him. It was the final indignity of a long day.

Some things take awhile to shrug off.