USC Stands Tall and Sits Pretty : College football: Wachholtz puts Trojans’ in Rose Bowl driver’s seat with 31-30 victory over Stanford after Otton suffers mild concussion.

Considering USC needs only a victory next week over Oregon State to reach the Rose Bowl, you might have expected a wild, celebratory locker room Saturday, moments after the Trojans’ wild 31-30 victory over Stanford at the Coliseum.

Instead, an exhausted football team seemed to wonder if there wasn’t an easier way to do this.

“I feel like I’m 60 years old,” center Jeremy Hogue said.

“My heart can’t take this every week,” offensive tackle John Michels added.

One more victory and they can relax a bit. Thanks to Oregon, which beat Washington, if the Trojans defeat Oregon State next Saturday at Corvallis, they’re in the Rose Bowl, making the Nov. 18 UCLA game for the city championship only.

USC, 7-1-1 overall and 5-0-1 in the Pacific 10, rallied from a 16-0 deficit and scored with 39 seconds left to win it. Last Saturday, the Trojans came back from a 21-point deficit in the fourth quarter to tie Washington.

Last week’s hero, starting quarterback Brad Otton, gave way early Saturday, the victim of a mild concussion on the game’s third play. This wasn’t learned, however, until the end of the first quarter.

Kyle Wachholtz played most of the game and threw the eight-yard touchdown pass to Keyshawn Johnson with 39 seconds remaining, capping an 80-yard, nine-play drive. But the 62,368 who sat mesmerized by USC’s final scoring drive then had to sit through more agony, Stanford’s final, frantic quest.

It ended with Johnson playing center field in USC’s defense, leaping high above an end zone mob to bat down Stanford quarterback Mark Butterfield’s Hail Mary pass, with no time left on the clock.

Johnson picked up the ball, ran to a section of wildly cheering fans seated near the Coliseum tunnel and threw them the game ball.

Unlike his young charges, USC Coach John Robinson sounded energized by the wild finish.

“First let me say this was a great football game,” he said. “Stanford played errorless football for three quarters--I told our team I’m proud of them as men. A game like this asks something of them as men.

“It asked something of Stanford. You never forget being involved in a game like this.”

Hogue, seated at his locker, sounded half-disgusted, half-exhausted.

“I knew what kind of effort we needed in the second half,” he said. “I mean, we’d been down 16-0 and hadn’t done a thing.

“But after Seattle, we knew we could do it. There was a new confidence in our huddles in the second half today.”

USC opened with a stinker of a first quarter, its drives ending with a blocked punt, an Otton interception and a punt. Stanford led, 13-0, and had it up to 16-0 before the Trojans crawled back into the game, coming back to trail, 24-17, at the half.

Otton was hurt on USC’s third play, tackled hard by Stanford’s Chris Draft on a third-down incompletion. Otton was helped to his feet and left the field as if he had sore ribs, not a sore head.

But when he played erratically on USC’s next three possessions, trainers decided the tackle by Draft had given him a minor concussion.

Said No. 3 quarterback Matt Koffler: “Brad said to me early in the second quarter [after Wachholtz had gone in] that he didn’t feel right, that he wasn’t feeling so good.”

Team physicians Michael Apuzzo and Chester Semel said Otton would be hospitalized overnight as a precaution.

Wachholtz triggered two fourth-quarter drives that overcame an outstanding performance by Butterfield, who completed 29 of 48 passes for 345 yards. His primary target: Mark Harris, who caught 10 balls for 187 yards, including a 60-yard touchdown bomb in the first quarter.

Wachholtz took his team to two fourth-quarter leads.

The first was a 65-yard drive for a score and a two-point conversion pass to Chris Miller, giving USC a 25-24 lead with 7:18 left.

But Stanford (5-3-1, 3-3) bounded back immediately, Butterfield going five for five passing on an 80-yard drive capped by Greg Comella’s six-yard burst up the middle. The two-point conversion failed and Stanford had a 30-25 lead with 2:57 to go.

Then Wachholtz, a fifth-year senior who has never started a game for USC, had his career peak.

He took USC 80 yards in nine plays for the go-ahead score. He was poised and true on the winning touchdown, tap dancing briefly behind solid protection, showing two small pump-fakes, then throwing a dart to Johnson in the back of the end zone.

Rodney Sermons’ two-point conversion run failed, but USC now had the lead, 31-30.

Trojan tailback Delon Washington had a big second half, once USC’s offensive line began dominating Stanford. He had 22 carries for 144 yards.

As for Otton, he spent the second half in the locker room and sat on a training table after the game, a blank look on his face.

He said he didn’t remember much, but he hadn’t lost his sense of humor.

Asked about the first-quarter interception, he quipped: “If I can’t remember it, it shouldn’t count against me, right?”