Poof! He Made Offense Disappear

Say this much for Pete Carroll. The guy is great with a top hat and wand.

He pulls quarters from behind his ear. He extracts scarves from his sleeve. In front of 69,959 at the Coliseum on Saturday, he made things levitate and change shape and go poof.

How Pete Carroll is with a college football team, however, we’re still not sure.

The Trojans lost a game they should have won, against a team whose only magic was a forearm shiver.

The final score was Kansas State 10, USC 6. The final margin was no bigger than two missed kicks and fumble.

Yet the two teams were as a different as Halas and Houdini.

The Wildcats hit. The Trojans schemed. The Wildcats hit. The Trojans sneaked. The Wildcats hit. The Trojans rummaged around for a rabbit.

If nothing else, at least you cannot say this is the same old USC.

The same old USC would not have gone 10 consecutive plays in the first half without handing the ball to its star running back, a guy who gained 167 yards last week.

This week, Sultan McCullough gained 40 yards and spent the afternoon as perhaps college football’s most gifted decoy.

The same old USC would not have essentially replaced McCullough with quarterback Carson Palmer, who ran the ball so much on scrambles and play-fakes and even a quarterback draw--a quarterback draw?--that something bad was bound to happen.

It was either going to be an injury or a fumble. Luckily for the Trojans, it was only a fumble.

The same old USC would not have conceded the trenches to Kansas State even before the trenches were dug.

This was something else entirely.

Maybe, USC Lite?

“We wanted to come out and open it up and get ‘em back,” Carroll said. “With their line, they squash you, they sit on you.”

Yet when one sustained push could have changed this game, the Trojans seemed more intent on prancing.

Even though Palmer’s fumble deep in Wildcat territory with 2:33 remaining cost the Trojans their final chance at victory, it certainly did not cost them the game.

This game was lost, perhaps, at the end of the third quarter, at the end of the Trojans’ longest and best drive.

Palmer had just scrambled for 10 yards for a first down at the Wildcat 48-yard line, his third third-down save of the drive. Kansas State coaches had summoned their defense to the sideline to scream at them. The thousands of purple-clad and purple-faced Wildcat fans in the end zone grew silent.

The Trojans finally had control. Then they wildly swung for the fences.

On two of the next three plays, Palmer threw deep, unsuccessfully, forcing a punt, giving the ball back to a running team for which possession is nine-tenths of victory.

Maybe, as Palmer later agreed, they really didn’t have a choice.

“They were putting eight guys in there [near the line],” he said. “It was more guys than we could block. We knew we had to throw the ball.”

And maybe this will turn out to be a huge moral victory against a national contender.

“We don’t know how good Kansas State is, but I hope they are very, very good,” Carroll said with a smile.

Then again, many said the Trojans did well last week in Carroll’s debut while fashioning an 11-point victory over San Jose State.

The same team that was waxed Saturday in Colorado by 36.

“I didn’t like the fact we didn’t play well,” Kansas State Coach Bill Snyder said.

Uh-oh.

The thing is, this early in the season, there are no measuring sticks other than the mirror.

This week USC will look in the mirror and see a loss to a team that pounded out the same sort of running game that used to belong to the Trojans. A running game that McCullough had seemingly resurrected.

Yet he carried for a yard on the third play of the game, lost three yards on the fifth play, gained another yard on the seventh play, and essentially disappeared.

By the time they needed him again in the second half, the rhythm was gone, and only one of his 18 carries--the seven-yard touchdown run--was meaningful.

“I totally understand, the run was not there, this was going to be a big day for our receivers,” McCullough said.

Funny, but it also seemed like the run was not there for Kansas State’s Josh Scobey either. Not once during his first six carries did he gain more than three yards. Yet by the time the game ended, he had gained 165 yards in 27 carries that wore down the Trojan defense.

“We need to build a foundation and this is the first stone,” Scobey said after his team’s debut.

What is it, then, for USC, now 1-1 and awaiting a visit to Oregon in two weeks?

Not a stone, certainly. More like a sponge, one that could change shape at any moment.

Despite giving up two weeks’ worth of rushing yardage, the defense gave up only one touchdown and has clearly benefited from Carroll’s NFL expertise.

But that talented offense ... is it going to be focused, or flighty?

Nobody knows. At this point, apparently not even Pete Carroll.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.