It’s clear that with a win over No. 18 USC this weekend, the fourth-ranked Oregon football team will clinch the right to host the inaugural Pac-12 championship in early December.
But with that game still three weeks away, head coach Chip Kelly had little to say about the matter as the Ducks took to the Moshofsky Center Monday morning with their focus entirely on the Trojans.
“These guys are just excited to play football,” Kelly said. “We’re not concerned with outside influences — praise and blame is all the same to us. Today was about having a good Monday.”
Questions about moving up in the BCS standings and the probability of a rematch with top-ranked LSU were avoided and Kelly said he only wanted to talk about this week’s matchup with an 8-2 USC team that will visit Autzen Stadium at 5 p.m. Saturday night for an ABC broadcast.
The Ducks are fresh off a crucial road win over then-No. 3 Stanford, who dropped to No. 9 in the BCS standings Sunday evening, and USC enters the contest as a winner of five of its last six outings, with a triple-overtime loss to the Cardinal as its only blemish.
Of course, the Trojans remain under NCAA sanctions and will end the season next week at home against UCLA without the opportunity to play in a bowl game or the Pac-12 title game, making this week’s matchup in Eugene the closest thing USC will get to the postseason in 2011.
Like Kelly, that’s not something the Oregon players have even considered.
“I could care less about any of that,” junior safety John Boyett said. “It’s all about Xs and Os, about knowing your opponent, knowing the game plan the coaches bring in and, most of all, just having a good week of practice leading into the game.”
On the field, Boyett and the Oregon secondary have a big week ahead as they prepare for two of the top receivers in the conference — if not the country — in USC’s Robert Woods and Marqise Lee.
Woods, a sophomore out of Carson, Calif., leads the Pac-12 in receptions per game (9.2), total receptions (92) and touchdowns (11) and is second in total receiving yards (1,126) and receiving yards per game (112.6) to Washington State’s Marquess Wilson.
Lee, a true freshman from Inglewood, Calif., attended Serra High School in San Mateo, Calif., with Woods and the two have tormented defensive coordinators with personnel mismatches all season.
“The one thing that’s different with those guys is they move them in so many different spots,” Kelly said. “It makes it really difficult to figure out where (Woods) is and that’s the big thing during pre-snap recognition of where they’ve deployed their personnel.”
For his efforts in the Trojans’ win over Washington, Lee was named the Pac-12 Player of the Week on special teams. The freshman took the opening kickoff of the second half 88 yards for a touchdown and also recorded a game-high nine receptions for 74 yards and a nine-yard score.
Oregon’s Jackson Rice was also nominated for that honor after he averaged 46.3 yards per punt on three kicks against Stanford. Sophomore wide receiver Josh Huff was nominated for the weekly honor on offense, while senior Terrell Turner was nominated on defense.
Huff caught two passes in the Stanford game, most importantly a 59-yard touchdown to start the third quarter that gave Oregon a 13-point lead and Turner had seven tackles and forced an Andrew Luck fumble that was recovered by Brandon Hanna and set up LaMichael James’ second touchdown.