COLLEGE FOOTBALL : Practice Pays Twice for Trojans’ Sehorn

It was a closed-door meeting, a make-or-break moment in the career of starting senior cornerback Jason Sehorn, who sat anxiously in the presence of USC Coach John Robinson and Don Lindsey, the team’s defensive coordinator.

“Just those two on me,” Sehorn recalled.

It was early October. Arizona had just crushed USC, 38-7. Sehorn had been beaten on a touchdown pass.

A mental breakdown. The last one, perhaps. Sehorn, a gifted athlete who didn’t care much for the labors of practice, was about to lose his job.

“I was a meeting away,” he said Saturday. “If I came to the meeting and didn’t say the right things, they were making changes right then and there.”

Sehorn apparently said the right things and started to take some of Lindsey’s ear-scorching lessons to heart.

It paid off.

Saturday, in USC’s 42-14 victory over California, Sehorn made two third-quarter defensive stands that almost got lost in the lopsidedness of the final score.

Funny as it sounds, Sehorn may have saved USC’s day. The Trojans were leading only 27-14 when Cal took the second-half kickoff and drove quickly into USC territory.

On second and 10 at the USC 38, quarterback Dave Barr lofted a pass over the middle intended for receiver Damien Semien, who had gained a step on Sehorn.

The pass appeared perfect and the crowd anticipated a touchdown. At the last possible moment, Sehorn closed on the play and tipped the ball away.

Sensing the play’s importance, Sehorn raised his fist to the sky.

If he doesn’t knock the ball down?

“That’s what Coach Lindsey goes through in the meetings,” Sehorn said later. “The one play. Say I take a bad angle and they make that play. Then we go into film, and he says, ‘There’s the one play that could cost us the game.’ ”

After USC punted, Cal came storming down the field again. The Golden Bears had a first down at the USC 25. Semien, lined up right in single coverage on Sehorn, ran a stop-and-go pattern to the right corner of the end zone.

The old Sehorn would have bit on the quarterback’s fake. The new Sehorn never took his eye off the receiver, stalked him to the corner, turned around and made the interception.

Lindsey would not have thought Sehorn capable of such decision-making a month ago. The coach had seen a hundred like him before. Sehorn was a great athlete who had converted from wide receiver to defensive back when he transferred to USC last season from Shasta Community College.

“It’s like a lot of great athletes,” Lindsey explained. “They know they got skills to do things, but going out there and practicing them is just beyond them a little bit. It’s like a golfer who’s pretty good naturally who says, ‘Why do I have to get in that sand trap and hit 100 balls? I’ll hit it out of the sand trap when it comes.’ ”

Sehorn doesn’t deny it.

“I’d say, ‘I’ll make that play in the game,’ ” he said. “It doesn’t work that way, I know now. If you don’t make it in practice, come the game, the same play happens and you don’t make it.”

Said Lindsey: “You can’t wait for Saturday to do those things. You’ve got to practice winning habits.”