No. 5 Notre Dame at USC, Saturday, 12:30, Coliseum, TV/radio: CBS/710 AM, Line: Notre Dame by 7.5 points, Records: USC 6-5 (4-5 Big Ten), Notre Dame 10-1

Luca Evans (OC Register)  —  LOS ANGELES — Marcus Freeman didn’t care if the players in his room now were there or not, two years ago. He would make sure they still felt his pain.

He has not forgotten the burnt ashes of his first season as Notre Dame’s head coach, crushed under four touchdowns and an instant-classic Heisman Trophy stiff-arm celebration from USC’s Caleb Williams. The Fighting Irish entered that 2022 rivalry at the Coliseum stabilized, after a five-game winning streak. They left overwhelmed, their worst defense in nearly a decade, run out of Southern California by Williams and Lincoln Riley’s offense.

A couple months after calls for Freeman’s head after a Week Two loss to Northern Illinois, this 2024 Fighting Irish team has rounded into one of the best top-to-bottom programs in the nation, riding a nine-game winning streak and one of the best defenses into the country into a rematch with USC at the Coliseum. They had moved forward, as Notre Dame defensive coordinator Bob Hinton reflected this week.

But the memory still stings.

“I felt it that day,” Hinton said, speaking to local media this week. “That was about as disappointed as I’ve ever been as a coach.”

On Saturday, as Notre Dame re-enters the Coliseum for the final game of this regular season, USC will seek to re-open the wound. Williams, now in the midst of a turbulent rookie season with the Chicago Bears that just saw head coach Matt Eberflus fired Friday, will return to USC for his jersey retirement.

It will mark a return to an inflection point for both programs: the peak of USC’s 2022 season before fates have collapsed the past two years, one of the lowest moments in Freeman’s Notre Dame tenure before rounding into a true national power.

And as a litany of factors assemble to give the Fighting Irish as much fuel as any program that has entered the Coliseum this year – with a College Football Playoff position on the line – USC and Riley have a prime chance to play spoiler in a spiritual bookend to their Week One win over LSU.

“I think it would be disrespectful to not be as ready as you possibly can be – coaches, players, everybody,” Riley said on Tuesday. “And the fact for us, it’s obviously our last game in the Coliseum, we’ve got a lot of great Trojans on this team, it’ll be their last game.”

For weeks, Riley has been treating a final stretch of matchups with Nebraska, UCLA and Notre Dame as a mini-season removed from the fourth-quarter failures of USC’s overall slate. And as the emotions of a flu-stricken win over UCLA cleared at the Rose Bowl last Saturday, Riley again pointed to the chance to secure “lifelong memories.”

When the dust clears against Fighting Irish on Saturday, it could mark the final game in a Trojans uniform for a host of massively important stalwarts who have been there since Riley’s introduction to USC, including center Jonah Monheim and cornerback Jaylin Smith.

But Notre Dame’s arrival on Saturday brings massive implications for USC’s future, too. After the NCAA shifted its recruiting calendar in the offseason, college football’s early signing period for this 2025 class now looms next week, beginning Dec. 4. USC doesn’t have the luxury of taking late home visits for recruits before they’ll put pen to paper in December. That will leave USC-Notre Dame as the final impression many 2025 recruits will have of these Trojans.

“It’s so unique right now,” Riley said Tuesday, of the new recruiting calendar, “because it’s just jumping up on us so quick.”

The chance at a massive upset – and a massive boost to USC and Riley’s stock – won’t come easy. Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love has run for 14 touchdowns in 11 games, while dual-threat quarterback Riley Leonard has run for 13.

USC defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn has called it “critical” to contain Leonard on third downs. “He’s very, very fast,” Lynn said of Leonard. “And he’s so tall and long that he doesn’t look that fast on tape. But he covers a lot of ground. So containing him, especially on third downs, is going to be critical.” Keeping Leonard in the pocket and daring him to pass used to be the best way to neutralize the Notre Dame QB. But Leonard has been much better throwing downfield in recent weeks.

The Fighting Irish’s defense, much improved from that 2022 unit, currently leads the nation in turnovers forced and is teeming with playmakers both off the edge and in the secondary.

Opposing quarterbacks have completed less than 48% of their passes against Notre Dame — the lowest completion rate by a defense since 2016 — and the Irish have picked off 15 passes, the ninth most in college football.

To be fair, Notre Dame hasn’t faced many passing offenses like USC, either. Just one of the Irish’s opponents (Louisville) ranks in the top 50 in passing yards. Most rank outside the top 100.

There’s more on the line for Notre Dame. But USC is playing for plenty in the 95th edition of a rivalry that could soon be swept up in the changing tide of college football.

“You can just feel the significance of the game, from the very first practice,” Lynn said Wednesday. “This week just felt a little bit different.” Lynn has been nominated for the Broyles Award, annually given to the nation’s top CFB assistant.

Prediction: Notre Dame 34, USC 17. Maybe USC will shock the world. But there’s plenty for Notre Dame at risk here.

ocregister.com

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