USC’s Ronald Johnson looks to get his hands on another big game

USC receiver Ronald Johnson is hoping for a repeat performance Saturday night when the 16th-ranked Trojans play Virginia at the Coliseum.

Johnson caught three touchdown passes and returned a punt for a touchdown last week against Hawaii.

The senior from Michigan also has some history against Virginia. As a sophomore in 2008, Johnson caught a 49-yard touchdown pass from quarterback Mark Sanchez late in the third quarter of the Trojans’ 52-7 season-opening rout at Charlottesville, Va.

“Mark told me in the huddle, ‘Just keep running and I’ll get it there,’” Johnson recalled. “Once I caught it, I was like, ‘Oh my God. I have to score.’”

Safety check

Safeties T.J. McDonald and Jawanza Starling worked this week to fix mistakes that plagued them in their first starts.

“If we’re finishing our plays, staying deep and doing everything our coach tells us, we’ll be fine,” McDonald said. “We have a short memory. Put that behind us and on to the next one.”

Coach Lane Kiffin remains optimistic about Starling and McDonald, both sophomores.

“They made some good plays [against Hawaii],” Kiffin said. “Jawanza ran some people down and T.J. had a couple hits. . . . It was basically their first major playing time last week in a new system so we look for them to continue to improve.”

Conservation corps

If USC’s players seem calmer during warmups — as they were at Hawaii — it is by design, Kiffin said.

“Our warmups are pretty dead — that’s on purpose,” he said. “We don’t let our players go out early . . . and run around and waste a bunch of energy.

“I just think with our [roster] numbers we need to conserve all our energy.”

Haden’s return

Pat Haden is looking forward to presiding over his first game at the Coliseum as athletic director.

Haden was a USC quarterback from 1972 to ’74. The Trojans did not lose a home game during his three varsity seasons, though they tied top-ranked Oklahoma, 7-7, in 1973, and California, 15-15, in 1974.

“This is hallowed ground for me,” Haden said of the Coliseum. “I walk out there and there’s a bunch of flashbacks.

“I don’t know how many people still talk to me about the 55-24 Notre Dame game [in 1974]. There must have been 300,000 people in the stands.”

Quick hits

USC has won its last 31 night games at the Coliseum. (The 2007 loss to Stanford ended at night, but the game started at 4 p.m.). . . . USC is 12-6 against Atlantic Coast Conference teams. . . . John Wilkins, a lineman who played in 1959 and 1960, is the only football letterman from Virginia to play at USC.

gary.klein@latimes.com