Remember the last regular season loss for the Trojans… only 39 games ago!

Carroll was asked to compare Saturday’s loss to USC’s last Pac-10 defeat before that, a triple-overtime decision to Cal in 2003. He said he thought the Trojans did more things well Saturday against the Beavers. Part of that, Carroll said, was that Booty played better than Matt Leinart had.

“Matt had a horrible game that day. He struggled, he turned it over, and we missed kicks,” Carroll said.

Cal was just a decent Pac-10 team then too, much like this Oregon State one.

No easy targets for blame game [OC Register]