Texas needs to learn from what it did well against USC

By Steve Habel/Senior Editor

AUSTIN, Texas — There are no moral victories in college football, but the Texas Longhorns have to be feeling better about themselves three games into the season, even after losing Sept. 16 to fourth-ranked USC, 27-24, in double overtime in Los Angeles in a battle that already is being considered a classic and one of the highlights of the barely-a-third-completed 2017 season.

Yes, the Longhorns are just 1-2 heading into Big 12 Conference play Thursday at Iowa State, but the first quarter of the season has produced some breakthrough stars and some scintillating performances; Texas will just need a lot more of both to find wins in a league that sports seven teams in the top 36 in the nation.

“You can compartmentalize losing and the disdain for losing [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)]and the awfulness that it is but still glean some very, very positive things from how we played and the intensity and effort level that we played with [against USC],” Texas coach Tom Herman said Monday.

“If we train like we did the week leading up to USC and we play like we did during that game and in the two overtimes, if we can do that each and every week, we’re going to be OK.”

Texas has some real issues to deal with as it heads to Ames, Iowa, and for the eight more games after Thursday’s contest. Thanks to attrition, transfers and injury — the latest of which befell All-American left tackle Connor Williams against USC — the Longhorns are down to five healthy offensive linemen that have any game experience at the college level. That’s the top issue right now.

The Longhorns already are struggling to run the ball — Texas had just 24 yards on nine carries from its running backs in the USC game — and has made the run game a priority in its off week.

“Throughout the course of the game, you’ve got to do what you’re doing well,” Herman said about the Longhorns’ ground performance against USC. You can’t fix that kind of problem, I don’t think, in the middle of the game. That problem needs to get fixed in practice. We’ve spent a lot of time talking about how we’re going to run the football better.”

The Longhorns’ goal of winning the Big 12 remains fully within reach, and they know what it’s going to take to make the needed step forward.

“We’re here with an opportunity to go 1-0 this week against Iowa State,” Herman said. “That being said, when you look at big-picture goals, which we don’t set very many of them, and I think maybe the only one that I ever even said publicly and certainly to our team was we want to compete for the Big 12 Championship in the month of November. Nowhere did we ever say one of our big-picture goals was to beat Maryland or beat USC or go 3-0 in non-conference.”

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