We know that the game will be won up front. – USC interim head coach Clay Helton
LOS ANGELES — Perhaps Utah coach Kyle Whittingham put it best.
"Why speculate on speculation?” he said earlier this week. “It doesn't make sense."
Although Whittingham was responding to a question about possibly becoming the next USC coach, his retort also works for Saturday’s game between the third-ranked Utes (6-0, 3-0) and the Trojans (3-3, 1-2) at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
Even so, there are plenty of things to speculate about in what could be a very pivotal Pac-12 South encounter. Utah is seeking its first win at USC since 1916.
Will this be the time? Are the Utes for real? How will the Trojans fare in their first home game under interim head coach Clay Helton, who replaced the fired Steve Sarkisian less than two weeks ago?
Those are just a few of the storylines grabbing headlines.
On the field, the contest pits a potent USC offense led by quarterback Cody Kessler and a stingy Utah defense that ranks among the Pac-12 leaders. The Utes are tied for second in the nation with 13 interceptions.
“We know that the game will be won up front,” Helton said.
Utah assistant head coach Dennis Erickson, who won two national championships at Miami and had other highly successful seasons in his lengthy career, noted that the Utes’ focus after six wins is getting the seventh.
“There’s no magic to anything, you’ve just got to win the seventh. To do what we want to accomplish, you can’t lose too many games, so it’s one game at a time,” Erickson said. “We’re going into a tough place to play and a team with a heckuva lot of athletes — always have, always will — so it’ll be fun.”
And a big challenge for the Utes, who enter the game against the Pac-12’s preseason favorites as the conference’s lone undefeated team.
“It’s pretty cool. We’ve just got to keep being humble and keep working,” said senior receiver Kenneth Scott. “If we keep being humble and keep working, the sky is the limit for us.”
The task at hand, though, is ending a 99-year drought at USC.
“That’s another thing on the checklist that we’ve got to get done,” Scott said. “Being a SoCal kid, I want to beat all the California schools. So that’s another checklist thing.”
Scott added that it’s a good opportunity for the Utes — on a couple of fronts. There’s certainly no shortage of optimism as they enter the second half of the season pursuing a division title amidst outside chatter of a College Football Playoff berth.
Utah, though, has circled the wagons and is determined to not look down the road.
“I like this team, I like their attitude on both sides of the football,” Erickson said. “They care about each other and they’re playing hard right now.”
Things are going so well, in fact, that Whittingham sees traits similar to Utah’s Fiesta Bowl team of 2004, the Sugar Bowl squad of 2008 and the 2010 Utes that started off 8-0.
“The real common thread is the ownership that the players take, and as a coach that’s what you’re looking for — the players to take ownership and really take control of the team in a sense,” said Whittingham, who praised team leaders like Scott, Jared Norris, Gionni Paul, Siaosi Aiono, Travis Wilson and Tevin Carter.
“We’ve got a long list of guys, which is what it takes, and the common denominator with these guys is they all care about the team first,” Whittingham said. “It’s not I’ve got to get mine. It’s what’s best for the team.”
Utah entered the week with a two-game advantage in the loss column over its nearest challengers in the Pac-12 South.
“We’re fortunate to be in the spot we’re in right now. We have to keep playing,” Whittingham said. “We have a tough opponent this week in USC. I don’t think that anyone would argue that year-in and year-out they are the most talented team in the Pac-12 and have a lot of weapons.
“We have to be at our absolute best this week to have a chance,” he added.
In regards to the USC vacancy, Whittingham’s response during the Pac-12’s weekly teleconference included the following: "I never make any comments on any job speculation one way or the other.”
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