For the second straight week, Oregon’s defensive secondary was burned for big yards, big plays and big scores.
Accordingly, the Ducks lost consecutive games at Autzen Stadium for the first time since 1997.
This week, Carson Palmer and the Trojans’ talented receiving corps burned the Ducks in a 44-33 victory.
In his fourth trip to Autzen, Palmer picked up his first win over the Ducks by passing for a school-record 448 yards and five touchdowns.
“Offensively, everything was easy,” Palmer said. “We knew they couldn’t stop us offensively, and they couldn’t stop us offensively.”
It’s a trend lately. Last week, Oregon gave up a Pacific-10 Conference record 536 passing yards to Arizona State’s Andrew Walter in a 45-42 loss.
Despite the shortcomings, Oregon head coach Mike Bellotti said he will not change his defensive scheme.
“That’s not an option,” he said. “We’ll continue to tinker with what we do. But we are playing some people that need to mature and get better. They’re young, and they will get better.
“But there’s not much we can do.”
Oregon true freshman Marques Binns started at one cornerback position in place of freshman Aaron Gipson, who had started the seven previous games this season. Binns, listed at 5-foot-10, lined up against USC true freshman Mike Williams, listed at 6-foot-5.
Williams finished the game with 13 catches for 226 yards — both USC freshman records — and two touchdowns.
USC senior receiver Kareem Kelly — who set the Pac-10 record Saturday with Oregon’s Keenan Howry for catching a pass in 43 straight games — made it clear that the Trojans’ “Triple Threat” receivers were better than Oregon’s three receivers who were depicted on a billboard in USC territory.
“We wanted to win this game since the first day of camp and the first day we saw the billboard,” Kelly said. “We took the billboard as an insult. So we wanted to come out here and put on a good show.”
And they did, particularly in the third quarter.
The Ducks took a 19-14 lead into halftime, but the Trojans came out of the locker room on fire, as they scored on a 31-yard Kelly reception in their first possession of the third quarter. USC added two more touchdowns before the end of the quarter, and another on the second play of the fourth to put the game out of reach at 41-19.
“We didn’t play a very good third quarter, which is obviously an understatement because that was a turning point in the game,” Bellotti said.
Like Oregon’s Los Angeles-based billboard, the Trojans left the sign of a big insult in Eugene.
“If we don’t get better, (losing) is something we’re going to have to get used to,” Oregon linebacker David Moretti said.