Wachholtz, USC Seemingly in Right Place at Right Time

In the USC football dossier, there aren’t many gaps between Rose Bowl appearances.

The Trojans are in a gap right now, though--it has been five years--and hope to get right with tradition tonight on what is expected to be the wet plastic grass of Oregon State’s Parker Stadium. The forecast calls for rain, changing to scattered showers by mid-morning.

USC (5-0-1 in the Pac-10, 7-1-1 overall), can reach Pasadena by playing .500 football in its last two games, against Oregon State (0-6, 1-8) tonight and UCLA next Saturday at the Coliseum.

Coach John Robinson obviously hopes that his starting quarterback, Kyle Wachholtz, can wrap it up tonight, against the Trojans’ favorite pigeon and the conference’s worst team. The Beavers are 0 for 8 since winning their opener.

USC not only almost always wins this game, it almost always wins big. Last year’s 27-19 victory here was uncharacteristically close. Some history:

--Overall, USC leads, 48-7-4.

--USC has won the last 21 games of the series. The last loss, 3-0, was here in 1967.

--Before last year, you have to go back to 1977 to find a close game here, 17-10. After that, the Trojans won here by 42-5, 56-22, 33-10, 41-20 and 56-10.

--In the last nine games, USC has outscored Oregon State, 388-85.

--In games played in the state of Oregon, USC leads 15-3-1.

If the Beavers’ prospects weren’t bad enough, starting quarterback Tim Alexander probably will not play tonight because of a bruised shoulder.

Alexander had a big game against USC here last year, running for 117 yards before breaking a collarbone. Junior Don Shanklin is expected to start.

Tough to imagine, then, next week’s Los Angeles city championship game becoming a USC Rose Bowl decider . . . unless the hapless Beavers and their 19 seniors rise to the occasion and win one for their embattled coach, Jerry Pettibone.

He is in the final year of a five-year contract, yet even with an 11-41-1 record, he is given a good chance of surviving by some close to the program.

One reason is that Beaver faithful are numbed by decades of losing.

The Beavers haven’t had a winning season in 24 years. And in 14 of those 24 years, Oregon State won two or fewer games.

Obviously, if you’re a Pac-10 quarterback making your first start, you want it to be against the Beavers.

Wachholtz is filling in for Brad Otton, who was knocked woozy last Saturday by Stanford linebacker Chris Draft. Otton was hospitalized with a concussion Saturday and Sunday and did not practice this week.

USC coaches see the Trojans’ last two games as vindication of their two-quarterback offense. Two game-tested quarterbacks were available, so the reasoning goes, when comebacks were mandatory.

Wachholtz is considered a co-starter, since he played the second and fourth quarters for most of this season. The 6-foot-5, 240-pound right-hander is the conference’s passing efficiency leader.

It was his turn to lead a comeback Saturday against Stanford, bringing USC back from 16-0, 24-10 and 30-25 deficits to a 31-30 victory.

The previous week, against Washington at Seattle, Robinson, down 21-0, left Otton in for the final quarter and he engineered a 21-point fourth quarter for a tie.

Robinson admitted this week that he’s willing to reach Pasadena by any means possible.

“I’ll go crawling, if we have to,” he said.

USC Notes

Trojan offensive coordinator Mike Riley will feel at home tonight. In his high school years, when his father, Bud, was an Oregon State assistant, Riley had a summer job with the Parker Stadium ground crew. . . . Oregon State expects a crowd of about 25,000, or 10,000 short of capacity.

Once strictly a wishbone team, Oregon State has been lining up in a power-I lately. . . . John Robinson, on the NFL prospects of his 6-3, 220-pound linebacker, Scott Fields: “I think he has a chance to be drafted as a special teams player initially, to see if he can grow. He’s either a small linebacker with really good speed or a defensive back who’s a step slow. He’s a tweener.”

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Pacific 10

Race at a Glance

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Team Conf. Overall W L T W L T USC 5 0 1 7 1 1 Washington 4 1 1 5 3 1 Oregon 4 2 0 7 2 0 UCLA 3 3 0 6 3 0 Stanford 3 3 0 5 3 1 Arizona 3 3 0 5 4 0 Arizona State 3 3 0 5 4 0 Washington St. 2 4 0 3 6 0 California 2 4 0 3 6 0 Oregon State 0 6 0 1 8 0

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Today’s Games

USC at Oregon St.

Washington at UCLA

Oregon at Arizona

Arizona St. at California

Stanford at Wash. St.

Next Week

UCLA at USC

California at Stanford

Oregon St. at Oregon

Wash. St. at Wash.

Arizona, Arizona St., idle