A Day of Surprises

After a long and exasperating search, USC discovered Saturday where its offense has been all season.

It has been playing defense.

The flash, dash and flair that defensive backs Chad Morton and Daylon McCutcheon have when the ball is in their hands brought USC’s season alive with a 45-21 victory over Stanford in front of 58,900 at the Coliseum.

Morton, moved from safety to tailback last week, took off on a 69-yard run on his first carry of the season and finished with 109 yards in seven tries. And McCutcheon, a cornerback playing both ways, made a brilliant cutback on an 18-yard touchdown run that gave USC its first lead.

Anybody else who wants to switch sides, step right up.

“Hey, I’ll take ‘em all,” offensive coordinator Hue Jackson said. “Let me have ‘em. Those guys are tremendous athletes.”

The jubilation was tempered late in the third quarter when quarterback Mike Van Raaphorst suffered a bad ankle sprain that is expected to keep him out of at least next week’s game at Oregon State and perhaps the season finale against UCLA.

But for the moment, the Trojans are in the hunt for a bowl bid instead of their next coach.

With a victory at Corvallis next week, USC (5-4, 3-3 in the Pacific 10 Conference) will have the six wins required to play in a bowl, with the Aloha, Independence, Las Vegas and Motor City bowls in the mix.

“Aloha Bowl, that’s the one of I’m thinking of,” said receiver R. Jay Soward, who, one week after being held without a reception against Washington, caught a career-high eight passes for 81 yards--including a 30-yard touchdown--and ran for 62 yards--including a 23-yard touchdown on a reverse.

Stanford (4-5, 2-4), which like USC started the season in the top 25, lost its fourth game in a row, once again troubled by turnovers--losing two fumbles and an interception thrown by quarterback Chad Hutchinson, who was pulled at halftime.

Receiver Troy Walters scored all three Stanford touchdowns--the first on a 66-yard return after Jim Wren’s 59-yard punt in the first quarter--and finished with 11 catches for 209 yards.

USC has struggled offensively all season and was coming off its first shutout in seven years last week, a 27-0 loss to Washington. But the Trojans broke out for their best performance of the season with the help of Morton and McCutcheon, even though a hamstring injury limited Morton after the first half.

Morton finished with the second 100-yard game of his career--he had a 143-yard game in emergency duty at tailback last season because of player suspensions.

McCutcheon, a gifted high school running back at Bishop Amat, chose to play cornerback in college because of the potential for a longer NFL career, but USC has turned to him increasingly the last two weeks.

His lone carry Saturday was a big one, McCutcheon leaping tacklers and then cutting back and eluding Stanford’s defenders to score the first touchdown on an offensive play of his college career. He scored one touchdown on a fumble recovery and another on an interception return as a freshmen.

“When I came around the corner, I saw the defensive end. He had contained, so I cut back and there was a big hole. I just had to get by two guys and I was in the end zone.”

How good a move was it?

“I think it’s a pretty good move whenever you end up in the end zone. I’d give it a 10,” McCutcheon said.

Cornerback Brian Kelly said he, for one, will stay on defense.

“They’re looking good over there. This is what we needed--some explosiveness,” Kelly said. “Not to say that the other guys who play there didn’t do a good job, but we have some weapons on this team. We’ve got to use ‘em.”

Van Raaphorst had a successful day running the offense before he was injured on a scramble at the end of the third quarter. He completed 12 of 21 passes for 128 yards and one touchdown, an 18-yard pass to Billy Miller, who stretched out to make the catch, giving USC a 31-7 lead with 12:41 left in the third quarter.

A redshirt freshman, Van Raaphorst took the job from sophomore John Fox last week. But make no mistake, it was the injection of speed that changed USC’s offense.

“We needed to find a way to get speed in our offense,” Robinson said. “We’ve obviously been struggling. We felt like we had to do something. . . . We certainly made use of our defensive players.”

USC had a 24-7 lead at halftime, but after struggling to score in the second half this season, the Trojans knew they couldn’t assume it was over.

“That’s been our Achilles’ heel,” Jackson said. “We needed to come out and dominate.”

This time, no letdown.

“We seem to be on a roller-coaster of events,” said Robinson, who has had so many lows he has vowed to resign at the end of the season if USC doesn’t turn things around. “We need to normalize ourselves a little bit and go at these last two or three games--whatever it is--with some sense of stability. And this was a good solid day for us.”

It was a day that could help them play one more day in December--in a bowl game.

“That was definitely on our minds,” offensive guard Chris Brymer said. “Especially since we sat at home last season.”