The Sports Report: Here’s why USC will go undefeated

Howdy, I’m your host, Houston Mitchell. Let’s get right to the news.

From Bill Plaschke: They have the best college football player in the country.

They have the best offensive football coach in the country.

They have the best offensive analyst in the country.

They play in the most fertile name, image and likeness market in the country.

There’s not one moment that should be considered too big, not one trip that should feel too far, and not one game in which they won’t be favored.

They have the star, the smarts, the savvy, the salesmanship and the schedule to own the autumn and dominate into winter.

The conversation around the 2023 USC Trojans football team’s regular season should begin with one word.

Undefeated.

If the Trojans play up to their potential, they should be perfect during their 12-game regular season, setting themselves up for a wild crapshoot of a postseason.

Unfair expectations? They lost to only one team on last year’s regular-season schedule and should be noticeably better.

Too much pressure? Lincoln Riley and Caleb Williams are paid handsomely to handle the heat.

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DODGERS

All MLB box scores

NL WEST STANDINGS

Dodgers, 76-47
San Francisco, 65-59, 11.5 GB
Arizona, 64-61, 13 GB
San Diego, 59-66, 18 GB
Colorado, 48-76, 28.5 GB

WILD-CARD STANDINGS
top three teams qualify

Philadelphia, 67-57
San Francisco, 65-59
Chicago, 64-59

Miami, 64-61, 1 GB
Cincinnati, 64-61, 1 GB
Arizona, 64-61, 1 GB
San Diego, 59-66, 6 GB

For full standings, go here

ANGELS

From Sarah Valenzuela: When Angels and Detroit Tigers fans turned on their televisions or opened their MLB TV apps to watch a game between the teams on July 25, they were met with technical difficulties. A power outage affecting the broadcast trucks left both team broadcasts without any video or proper audio capability.

For Tigers fans, this meant either listening to the TV broadcasters without a picture — just a “We are experiencing technical difficulties” graphic — or simply listening to the radio broadcast. Except for a nonfunctional video monitor that Tigers radio announcer Dan Dickerson likes to use, he and his partner were able to call the game right in front of them without issue.

Meanwhile, on the Angels radio broadcast, play-by-play announcer Terry Smith and color commentator Mark Langston had to explain to listeners that their announcing might sound off. The duo were calling the game off the All-9 camera feed, the only one accessible to them for the first 35 minutes of the game because of the outages.

“Just to paint the picture for you,” Smith explained over the broadcast, “when we’re in the upper deck of any stadium right behind home plate, we’d be able to see the entire field from home plate all the way out to dead center, the corner outfielders, as well. So that’s the view we have right now. So it does make it very difficult when the ball is hit, because we’re so removed from everything, to even see if number one, it is hit, and number two, where did it go. And we’re relying on the movement of the fielders right now.”

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All MLB box scores

AL WEST STANDINGS
Texas, 72-52
Houston, 70-55, 2.5 GB
Seattle, 69-55, 3 GB
Angels, 61-64, 11.5 GB
Oakland, 34-90, 38 GB

WILD-CARD STANDINGS
top three teams qualify

Tampa Bay, 75-51
Houston, 70-55
Seattle, 69-55

Toronto, 69-56 0.5 GB
Boston, 66-58, 3 GB
Angels, 61-64, 8.5 GB
New York, 60-64, 9 GB

For full standings, go here

CHARGERS

From Jeff Miller: The Chargers lost to New Orleans 22-17 Sunday at SoFi Stadium in their second preseason game.

Here are the highlights:

Stick struggles to produce: A week after a solid performance against the Rams, No. 2 quarterback Easton Stick was less consistent, finishing 21 of 41 for 233 yards with two interceptions and a lost fumble.

Stick, who is entering his fifth season but first as the backup, also scored two touchdowns while running for 63 yards in seven carries.

He played the entire game, coach Brandon Staley explaining that the increased snaps were significant at this point in Stick’s development.

“Easton needed to play in a game like this,” Staley said. “He was able to fight through some things. He was able to give us a chance to win in the two-minute drill.”

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BEACH VOLLEYBALL

From Thuc Nhi Nguyen: After he watched his brother celebrate for three consecutive years, it was about time Taylor Crabb got his moment in the sun.

Make that “in the rain.”

Playing through wet conditions from Hurricane Hilary, Taylor Crabb won his first Manhattan Beach Open on Sunday, ending his older brother Trevor Crabb’s three-year reign with a 27-25, 21-16 win alongside partner Taylor Sander.

Taylor Crabb, 2½ years younger than Trevor, had lost 12 of his last 15 matches against his older brother, including a thrilling three-set match in the winners bracket on Saturday. The brothers are now the first blood relatives to each have titles at the legendary tournament.

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WOMEN’S WORLD CUP

Spain won its first women’s World Cup title less than a year after a player rebellion, holding off England 1-0 on Sunday after Olga Carmona’s first-half goal.

The victory made La Roja the first team to hold the under-17, under-20 and senior world titles at the same time. Spain is the fifth winner in nine editions of the Women’s World Cup and joined Germany as the only two nations to win both the men’s and women’s titles.

At the final whistle the Spanish players piled on each other in front of their goal. They were still dancing on the field until the trophy presentations, where they kissed the trophy and raised their arms in triumph as golden glitter fell from above.

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Schedule, results
All times Pacific

FINAL
Sunday
Spain 1, England 0

THIRD-PLACE GAME
Sweden 2, Australia 0

THIS DATE IN SPORTS

1901 — William Larned wins the first of seven men’s singles titles in the U.S. Lawn Tennis Assn. championship.

1914 — Walter Hagen captures the U.S. Open golf title by edging Chick Evans.

1920 — Jock Hutchinson wins the PGA golf tournament with a 1-up victory over J. Douglass Edgar.

1931 — Babe Ruth of New York hits his 600th home run as the Yankees beat the St. Louis Browns 11-7.

1932 — Helen Hull Jacobs beats Carolyn Babcock to win the women’s singles title in the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association.

1985 — Mary Decker sets the world record in the mile run with a time of 4:16.71 in Zurich.

1990 — Kelly Craig becomes the first female starting pitcher in Little League World Series history, opening for Trail, British Columbia. She fails to retire any of the three batters she faces but the Canadian champions rally for an 8-3 victory over Matamoros, Mexico.

2003 — Paul Hamm puts together a near-perfect routine on the high bar to become the first American man to win the all-around gold medal at World Gymnastics Championships. Needing a 9.712 or better to beat China’s Yang Wei, Hamm strings together four straight release moves during his 60-second routine — one of the toughest feats in gymnastics — for a 9.975 and the gold.

2004 — American super-swimmer Michael Phelps wins his 6th gold medal of the Athens Olympics even though he doesn’t swim the final of men’s 4 x 100m medley relay; US wins in world record 3:30.68.

2008 — At the Summer Olympics in Beijing, Yukiko Ueno pitches 28 innings in two days, including seven to shut down the U.S. softball team, 3-1, and give Japan the gold medal. It was the first loss for the Americans since Sept. 21, 2000 — 22 straight games. LaShawn Merritt upsets defending champion Jeremy Wariner to lead a U.S. sweep of the 400 meters track event. David Neville gets the bronze. The U.S. men and women both drop the baton in the Olympic 400-meter relays and fail to advance out of the first round. Jamaica’s Veronica Campbell-Brown easily wins the 200 meters to cap the first sweep of all four men’s and women’s Olympic sprints in 20 years.

2010 — Kyle Busch makes NASCAR history with an unprecedented sweep of three national races in one week, completing the trifecta with a victory in the Sprint Cup race at Bristol Motor Speedway. Busch, winner of the Nationwide race a day earlier and the Trucks race on Aug. 18, becomes the first driver to complete the sweep since NASCAR expanded to three national series in 1995.

2011 — The Sparks run off 16 straight points to overcome a 15-point, second-half deficit and hand the Tulsa Shock their WNBA-record 18th consecutive loss with a 73-67 victory. The Atlanta Dream lost 17 in a row in their inaugural season of 2008.

2016 — Kevin Durant scores 30 points and helps the Americans rout Serbia 96-66 for their third straight gold medal. That caps an Olympics in which the U.S. dominated the medal tables, both the gold (46) and overall totals (121). The 51-total-medal margin over second-place China the largest in a non-boycotted Olympics in nearly a century.

2018 — Liu Xiang of China sets a world record time of 26.98 seconds to win the women’s 50-meter backstroke gold medal at the Asian Games. Liu becomes the first woman to swim under 27 seconds in the event, breaking the mark of 27.06 set by fellow Chinese swimmer Zhao Jing at the 2009 world championships in Rome.

—Compiled by the Associated Press