Freedom Rooting for Trojans : Bowl game: If USC wins Saturday, it will secure Pac-10 berth. At-large possibilities include Fresno State, Indiana, Utah, Wisconsin.

It appears likely that the 1992 Freedom Bowl will match USC and an at-large team from either the Big Ten or Western Athletic Conference, game director Don Andersen said Tuesday.

The third-place team in the Pacific 10, currently USC, earns an automatic bid to the Dec. 29 game at Anaheim Stadium. The other team will probably come from a group that includes Fresno State, Indiana, Utah and Wisconsin.

Much depends on the outcome of a number of games on Saturday, and Andersen expects to narrow the at-large field by Sunday morning.

An official announcement will not be made until Dec. 6 when the bowl coalition, which does not include the Freedom Bowl, extends invitations to its bowls.

Suffice it to say, Andersen is rooting for USC to defeat UCLA Saturday and keep its hold on third place. Second-place Stanford, which plays California Saturday, and fourth-place Arizona, which plays Arizona State, also could find their way to Anaheim.

“(USC) would be the best thing that could happen to this game,” Andersen said. “We locked in with the Pac-10 in hopes of getting a local Pac-10 team. It’s likely that the coalition will take Stanford. We couldn’t have plotted it any better.”

If USC comes to Anaheim, it would only be the second time in the Freedom Bowl’s nine-year history that a local team played in the game.

UCLA, behind 266 rushing by Gaston Green, defeated Brigham Young, 31-10, in front of a Freedom Bowl-record crowd of 56,910 in 1986.

WAC teams Fresno State and Utah are under contract to buy 11,800 tickets, and Wisconsin has told Andersen it will buy at least that many.

“Wisconsin has really been campaigning (for a bowl berth),” Andersen said.