SEATTLE -- As much as Saturday's 16-13 loss at Washington hurts and confounds, two things are absolutely certain.For one, the game is history, and two, all that matters now is USC's response to the heartbreak, defeat, pain.
"We can't do anything about what just happened," Coach Carroll said in the sullen visitors' locker room after Saturday's game. "We must respond."
The past in the past and the future ahead, the bounce is what counts, as Carroll has said many times before.
"The challenge is coming back," Carroll told his players. "We've got to stay together, be one and have a championship response."
The same championship response the team has displayed in five out of the previous seven seasons that included a Pac-10 loss but ended with a Pac-10 title. The same response that gets back to work, gets back on board and plays out the long season ahead, where anything can happen as long as the players and coaches keep fighting. The reward at the race's finish line is still unknown, and the only way the team will get there and find out is by persevering, pressing on and not letting the past determine the future.
But before moving forward, they've got to understand what happened. So how did Saturday's defeat occur? Masochism, in a word.
Three turnovers, 75 penalty yards and 0-for-10 on third-down conversions. The stats are suffocating and glaring.
"The football lessons are obvious," Coach Carroll said. "If you turn the ball over like that and make all those penalties, it makes it really hard to win. You have to overcome when stuff like that happens, but we just couldn't today."
Carroll's words of truth kept piercing through the silent visitors' locker room in the bowels of Husky Stadium, stinging the Trojans with all the realities of the game.
"We just weren't a good enough football team to win today," Carroll said. "We're so much better than that, but we played like an ordinary football team. So we have to go back to our football and get better."
The ever-positive Carroll continued to turn his players' attention forward to what they can affect instead of back to what they can't -- "stay with us, no pointing fingers, we need everybody," he challenged.
"The important part now is: What're you going to do about it now?" Carroll said. "Where will your mind go? Where will your heart go? Will it go to the pits or will it go to what has to happen next?"
That "next" will begin Monday afternoon with meetings and practice for the Trojans. In the meantime, the shocked, somber looks and deep, painful expressions will tell the story.
Football is a cruel, often symmetrical game. One week after the highest of highs, the Trojans find themselves among the lowest of lows. Just seven days after capturing an epic three-point victory at Ohio State, USC dropped a three-point decision at Washington on Saturday. The Trojans go from the beautiful silence of a stunned Ohio Stadium crowd to the torturous silence heard on the walk up the tunnel, in the locker room after the game, on the bus ride to the airport and aboard the long flight home.
The silence hurts. It all hurts.
But as much self-inflicted pain they're feeling and will continue to feel until their next win, the Trojans are also building character. Losses such as Saturday's test a team's mettle, refine its purpose and bring the players together ever-so-tightly. Character wins championships, and the Trojans are in for an overload of character-creating moments as they take their next steps from here.
There's good in every situation, and the Trojans can take solace in the fact that they've been in this circumstance in years past -- and bounced back to do remarkable things.
"We know we can win championships after things like this," Carroll told his players, with no doubt in his voice. "We've been here before and we're going to climb back."
