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USC Morning Buzz: What Will It Take To Understand Rivalry?

Remember last month I wrote about a former USC player who spent time around the program saying he was shocked at how little mention of the importance of the Crosstown Rivalry was made during the week of the UCLA game?

And over the weekend, Eric Musselman ripped his players for not understanding the rivalry.

So we have a football coach (Lincoln Riley) who could care less about the rivalry (this is no secret inside the McKay Center and Heritage Hall) and a basketball coach who isn’t getting his players to understand the rivalry?

What the hell is going at USC?

Does someone need to provide USC coaches with a checklist of priorities? I’m not even saying to beat your archrival. I’m saying to just treat it like it’s the most important game of the year.

How is this not a given? It doesn’t help when you have an athletic dept. that’s become a mishmash of Cincinnati/Washington/Whoever U. people at the top that probably don’t fully appreciate the rivalry.

Riley is a blank slate from Muleshoe, Texas. He doesn’t care. But Musselman is a different story. He went to the University of San Diego. He understands rivalries like Nevada-UNLV. It’s hard to fathom that he didn’t get his players to understand what the rivalry means.

As the famous line from “Cool Hand Luke” goes, “What we have here is failure to communicate.”

  • As USC women’s basketball now waits for the NCAA Tournament, it’s strange that freshman guard Kayleigh Heckel did not even play Sunday against UCLA and played a combined nine minutes in the previous two games of the Big Ten Tournament.

USC gets very little from its bench offensively and Heckel was a rare source of points during the season. You would think she could provide something important during the NCAA Tournament — if she gets the chance.

40 thoughts on “USC Morning Buzz: What Will It Take To Understand Rivalry?”

  1. A player ‘getting up’ for an SC-ucla game probably is not much different from most any other game. There’s something to “Treat every game the same”– How much ‘harder can a guy play from game-to-game?

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    1. KAM:  What is the state of the Los Angeles city budget? The city’s controller is raising the alarm, saying it’s in dire shape.

      DON: Controller Kenneth Mejia sent a letter to the Castro-loving Globetrotting Democrat Mayor Bass and the Democrat-dominated do-nothing City Council, warning that the city is facing less revenue and, coupled with higher spending, could mean a big fiscal problem. His report says the city faces a $140 million shortfall in revenue for this fiscal year, and an additional decrease of $73 million next year, not counting the expenses for the Palisades Fire.

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    2. It had to be MG. Who else would announce his return by referencing an obscure quote from Hamlet. The question is whether he will stay. That likely depends on Scott’s ability to clean up the board. He said he “excised” Cowardly Gabby but we then heard from him later that day.

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      1. I’m back, guys! I think Scott’s doing the best he can to keep Kathy away —-but he can’t be on it 24/7……

        #…EvenScottNeedsToSleep

        #[Unfortunately,That’sNotTrueOfKathy…

        #”SatanNeverSleeps”]

        Liked by 1 person

  3. KAM: They just did a poll measuring who was smarter, a Democrat or a Republican– guess who won?

    DON: How many guesses do I get?

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    1. KAM: USDA Cancels Grant Approved By Senile Joe Administration to Study ‘Trans Men’s’ Menstrual Cycles

      DON: Can you Democrats be any dumber?

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  4. -And Wiley doesn’t ‘get’ the ND/ucla rivalries?– You can bet he knows he’s only 1-2 against Notre Dame with a trip back there in October

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    1. KAM: California chancellor resisting Trump executive order wastes taxpayers’ money.

      DON: Administrators now have a choice. They can ignore federal law and drag their institutions into turmoil—or they can cut their losses, end discriminatory policies, and serve students fairly.

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  5. — SC’s last visit to South Bend and ND was in 2023 when ‘Celeb’ lost the game in the 1st quarter. The Trojans win only 1 out of 3 in that God-driven place

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  6. Maybe its time to put Riley in the box.

    “Any man loses his spoon spends a night in the box. There’s no playin’ grab-ass or fightin’ in the buildin’. You got a grudge against another man, you fight him Saturday afternoon. Any man playin’ grab-ass or fightin’ in the buildin’ spends a night in the box.”

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  7. KAM: One of the great movie lines is “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate”

    DON: Also known as, “My way or the highway’

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    1. KAM: DOGE Uncovers More Than $300M in Loans Given to Children 11 Years Old or Younger During COVID

      DON: The Swamp has many scams.

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      1. 80% OF THE LOANS IN QUESTION WERE ISSED IN 2020 WHEN TRUMP WAS RUNNING THE SHOW….. YOU LOOK LIKE A TOTAL DUMB—-A S S

        MASSIVE CROTCH KICK…….LAUGHING MY A S S—–OFF

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      2. The SBA is run by 99% Democrat loons like you, Board Pest Board Cancer Cowardly Gabby aka TebowObama aka Charlie Bucket the UCLA Fan aka The Guy who posts as So Cal’s Wife & Michael Guarino & LawyerJohn & Pudly & Plow Horse & steveg49 & DOJ & Scott Wolf and Frank Young and KATHY and Foreskin Thoughts. That’s why you hate the oversight now you lying piece if lib dung.

        Liked by 1 person

      3. KAM: After a 6 week review the State Department is officially cancelling 83% of the programs at USAID.

        DON: Cowardly Gabby hardest hit!

        Liked by 1 person

  8. KAM: I suppose the differences between Republicans and Democrats is largely a matter of degree and a ‘failure to communicate’

    DON: Oh I dont know about that, the ‘communicating’ looks pretty clear to me

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      1. Let’s face it –it’s time for DOJ to pursue a multi count prosecution of the billionaire financing American destruction [everybody know his name].

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      3. The data shows that ideology, race and gender are all statistically significant predictors of self-reported mental health, with liberals like Cowardly Gabby having the worst self-reported mental health compared to moderates and conservatives, and women like Cowardly Gabby having worse self-reported mental health than men. What’s more, the interaction between race, ideology, and gender is statistically significant — with liberal white and non-white women like Cowardly Gabby having the worst self-reported mental health.

        This trend has also been reported by Zach Goldberg and Haidt using Pew Research’s data, as well as findings from Gimbrone et al. Using FIRE’s 2024 Campus Free Speech Rankings data, we’ve seen that 36% of students reported feelings of poor mental health more than half the time.

        Out of these 15,000 students, 67% were liberal, compared to just 16% moderate and 17.3% conservative.

        To put it simply, the more students were likely to believe in “social justice fundamentalism”, the more miserable they tended to be.

        Liked by 1 person

      4. I don’t think Kathy seems miserable….

        …and who are we to judge her mental health on the basis of a few hundred dog crap videos?

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  9. -But we’re off subject, getting back to Wiley, the odds are he doesnt ‘do’ social media and lives in peaceful rapture

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    1. KAM: “It is not a criminal violation to enter the country illegally… It’s not a crime.” – Racist black Democrat Rep Jasmine Crockett.

      DON: Yeah, it’s literally a crime See 8 U.S.C. § 1325

      Liked by 1 person

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  10. KAM: Mainstream Moderate Democrats are distributing bumper stickers calling for the assassination of Elon Musk.

    DON: The Democrat Party is resorting to political violence because voters are rejecting them at the ballot box.

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  11. Scooter,

    Apathy starts at the top and that starts with Folt the Dolt leading down to Jen Taco Lita. My question is, when SC plays ND back at ND, will Bowden lead the importance of the riverly? Somone has to. Marv Goux is not here to do that.

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    1. PT: will Bowden lead the importance of the riverly? 

      you sound like a total dumb—-a s s ……..must suck to be a racist and ignorant.

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      1. Cowardly Gabby aka Charlie Bucket shows us again what a complete moron she is with her latest post saying “you don’t rake the forest floors… Oopsie! “https://x.com/frank144/status/1877023860643508481

        Gabby

        JANUARY 8, 2025 AT 3:50 PM

        you don’t rake the forest floors…..you’re an insecure d u m p—–a s s ……I see why everyone deserted this lame blog

        Liked by 1 person

      2. “Freak” and “Triggered” = Soundtrack For Kathy Doll

        #AllSheHasOnTape…

        #AllThereIs

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  15. Good points. Also ironic because the edict after Garrett and Haden was to get people in with no USC ties, to remove the “corruption” … so hasn’t really worked out that great.

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