USC Football: Trojans pull away from over-matched UNLV
3. Believe in the USC defense
The closeness of this game was not the fault of the Trojan defense. They did everything in their power to keep UNLV off the board and nearly succeeded with the exception of two big plays. Those big plays a 71-yard run by L Thomas and a 31-yard pass from A Rogers to K Keys represented a quarter of the UNLV offense.
You don’t get to take mulligans on plays that work against a favorable stat line, but outside of those two long scores, USC was fantastic on the defensive front. The Rebels were 5-of-15 on third down and threw for a measly 97 yards on 27 attempts. Their rushing attack was fairly potent but rendered less effective when the Trojans took a two-score fourth quarter lead.
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This defense returned eight starters this year. Replacing linebacker Uchenna Nwosu and defensive lineman Rasheem Green were the only real question marks. With the amount of depth the Trojans have at both positions, there shouldn’t be much regression at all for this unit in 2018. If Saturday was any indication, they might even be better than last year’s squad.