Lane Kiffin has lamented his team?s youth, but with Game 5 on tap against Arizona, it?s time for those young players to make more plays and fewer mistakes
By MICHAEL LEV
LOS ANGELES ? Throughout the first four weeks of the 2011 season, USC coach Lane Kiffin lamented the mistakes committed by his freshmen. Heading into Week 5, one couldn't help but wonder: Will the Trojans ever reach a point when those errors are no longer expected?
"We have," Kiffin said. "Right now."
That was the message Kiffin sent to his players Sunday, the unofficial start of preparations for Saturday's game against Arizona. In his view, USC's first-time starters have passed the two milestones needed to get the freshman jitters out of their systems: Their first college games overall and their first on the road.
"This is definitely the time," said Kiffin, whose team played its first away game last week vs. Arizona State.
"There (is) no more time for freshman mistakes or newcomer mistakes, because there's no excuses anymore."
Kiffin has been guilty of using that excuse. It seemed particularly odd after the ASU game, a 43-22 loss, because veterans made the most glaring mistakes: junior quarterback Matt Barkley (three turnovers), junior safety T.J. McDonald (three penalties) and senior tailback Marc Tyler (one fumble).
But Kiffin insisted, particularly in the case of Barkley's turnovers, that errors made by inexperienced players ? ones not obvious to the casual viewer ? contributed to some of those breakdowns. It's hard for USC to run a play these days without freshmen or redshirt freshmen being involved.
Against ASU, seven freshmen or redshirt freshmen started: left guard Marcus Martin; receiver Marqise Lee; tight ends Xavier Grimble and Randall Telfer; outside linebackers Dion Bailey and Hayes Pullard; and kicker Andre Heidari. Three others played prominent roles off the bench: defensive tackle George Uko, cornerback Anthony Brown and tailback Amir Carlisle.
Having just been through his freshman season, sophomore receiver Robert Woods knows what it's like to experience being inexperienced. He agreed with Kiffin's assessment that this is the time when the excuse no longer flies.
"Third or fourth game," Woods said. "Now it's just, get going. You know everything. Mistakes should be really limited."
Of course, Woods was an exceptional first-year player, earning Pac-10 Conference Offensive Freshman of the Year honors. And the example Kiffin most often cites to illustrate how a freshman can mature in midseason is extraordinary as well.
Kiffin's go-to guy in that regard is 2002 go-to receiver Mike Williams, who dropped several passes in his third game, at Kansas State.
"We had really put a lot on him ... and that was a tough environment," said Kiffin, USC's receivers coach at the time. "But he managed to come back and set every freshman (receiving) record in the country after that.
"We showed that to our guys as motivation: You're going to go through these times. But we're going to play you. We know these things are going to happen, and you're going to be better down the road.
"We have a lot of guys where we're looking for that to happen."
Special teams coordinator John Baxter cautioned that it isn't always a smooth process. In the ASU game, Grimble fielded a short kickoff and downed the ball ? even though the Sun Devils had used the same tactic twice previously, and Baxter instructed his up-backs to let the ball bounce or run with it.
On the second of those two occasions, Rhett Ellison made the same mistake. He's a senior.
"What's a freshman mistake? A freshman mistake is a mistake that you make the first time something happens to you," Baxter said. "It's really not a freshman mistake, it's an inexperience mistake. ... There's no such thing as instant experience."
Contact the writer: mlev@ocregister.com
Your bio is currently empty. Now is a great time to fill in your profile.
Please wait while we perform your request.
2 comments
Name withheld
mgtrojan
Thisis hidden because you have chosen to ignore mgtrojan.
A lot of this is coaching. There are may teams that can put together a small group of new starters and they do very well and improve fast as a group. Im looking at the coaching as being questionable here.
Please wait while we perform your request.Please wait while we file your abuse report.
Report Abuse
Please wait while we send the email.
Email This
cody kessler markeith ambles kyle prater george farmer xavier grimble jalen grimble matt kalil
No comments:
Post a Comment