Luca Evans (OC Register)  —  COLLEGE PARK, Md. — At long last, after a season scorned by losses, after the “few plays away” that had defined USC’s season, they seemed set to close a football game on the steady leg of Georgia Southern transfer kicker Michael Lantz.

41-yard try. Two minutes left. USC up six. Snap. Kick. Ballgame, it should’ve been.

But Lantz’s boot never quite made it in the air.

Maryland’s Donnell Brown burst through and deflected the field-goal attempt, the loose football scooped up by the Terrapins’ Caleb Wheatland, and a USC program that’s shown a complete inability to simply close games in 2024 left the door open just long enough for a fleet of red to streak through.

They’d all been bad. They’d all been heartbreaking. There was the gut-wrencher in Ann Arbor, and the frustration in Minneapolis, and the Penn State madness at the Coliseum last week, and yet nothing quite compared to the sheer bafflement that unfolded in College Park on Saturday afternoon as USC fell 29-28 to Maryland.

First came the blocked kick after a second half of calamities, and then a Maryland drive that gave the Terrapins a stunning lead in the span of but five plays, and then a final USC drive that seemed momentarily destined for glory until Miller Moss dropped back on fourth down.

Needing two yards to set up another Lantz try, with 10 seconds left, he darted a ball over the middle to the normally steady-as-a-rock Woody Marks.

The ball popped out, off a Maryland tackle, the kind of break that’s never gone USC’s way in a shocking 3-4 start – and 1-4 Big Ten – that somehow, some way, could still be 7-0.

Again, a strong first half was flushed down the drain. Again, Lincoln Riley refused to turn heavily to the running game as time wound down in the second half. Again, a fourth quarter and an eventual loss had come down the “few plays away” that have defined Riley’s time in Southern California.

Things looked just peachy at the end of the first half, when Moss found tough-handed sophomore Makai Lemon – rapidly becoming a favorite target – for a 24-yard gain over the middle, Marks punched in a touchdown after a couple handoffs, and USC held a 21-7 lead.

After a season of youthful inconsistency for USC’s sophomore receiving corps, they put on a 30-minute clinic, Lemon totaling five first-half catches and young Megatron Ja’Kobi Lane somehow twisting on one second-quarter ball from Moss for a one-handed TD grab that defied all of Isaac Newton’s scientific epiphanies. And after a couple weeks of iffy performances, Saturday’s first two quarters saw the return of the Moss that fans saw in the Holiday Bowl, a gunslinger who dotted his way to a 196-yard first half.

But even in his best games of 2024, even as Riley stuck with self-described “zero question” to Moss as his starter, the junior’s been prone to head-scratching mistakes that have doomed USC’s fortunes. And with USC moving in the third quarter, another brutal decision set disaster in motion, firing off his back foot and floating an interception that resulted in a Maryland score not a play later.

After another ineffectual USC drive, cornerback Jaylin Smith momentarily played superhero, skying for a remarkable one-handed pick on a fourth-and-goal to put the Trojans back in the driver’s seat. With momentum at the start of the fourth quarter, buoyed by a steady ground attack from Marks, Moss found Duce Robinson for a 26-yard push into the end zone for another sophomore-starring moment.

Maryland retaliated with a score, as USC too often strayed away from handing the ball to Marks. But on what seemed a last-gasp Maryland drive with three minutes to go, D’Anton Lynn’s defense – so often lambasted for their lack of pressure and weakness at closing on fourth downs – sent ballhawk Kamari Ramsey flying off the edge, bringing down Edwards Jr. for a sack.

It seemed the clincher. It seemed, at long last, that USC could close.

Only for a kick to be sent dribbling, and a season to continue slipping.