USC Holds Off Rutgers 42-35 and Stays Unbeaten at 4-0
Subtract Prophet Brown's 99-yard interception return and USC has 35 points to Rutgers' 35. That is how close this was, and it is also the play that kept Rutgers at 0-3.
USC led from the first score to the last. Caden Chittenden kicked a 35-yard field goal, King Miller ran in from 11 yards, and it was 10-0 before Dylan Lonergan hit KJ Duff for 11 to make it 10-7 with four seconds left in the first quarter. Jayden Maiava found Corey Simms from 52 yards early in the second, Lonergan threw to Elias Coke from 16 with 1:25 left in the half, and Chittenden's 32-yard field goal with 10 seconds left made it 20-14 at the break.
Brown's pick-six opened the third quarter's scoring, 27-14. Clay Thevenin answered with a 17-yard run, Riley Wormley ran in from 12 (Maiava then threw to Kayden Dixon-Wyatt for the two-point try) to make it 35-21, and Antwan Raymond's two-yard run cut it to 35-28 going into the fourth. Maiava hit Wormley from two yards with 8:35 left for 42-28, and Lonergan threw 28 yards to V. Allen III with 4:24 left to make it a one-score game again. That was the last score.
The yardage was a coin flip: USC 466, Rutgers 465. The difference was turnovers. Rutgers threw two interceptions and USC had none, and one of those picks went the distance. USC is 4-0. Rutgers is 0-3 and can say, with a straight face, that it matched USC yard for yard. Lonergan's 30.8 points made him the top fantasy scorer in the game, on a day his own team lost.