Maryland Visits USC With Streaks That Mostly Don't Apply to This Setup

Maryland travels to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to face USC on Saturday, November 21, with a 6:15 PM ET kickoff. The teams have not met in the last 400 days, so there is no recent head-to-head to work from. The central question is how much weight to give streaks that belong to situations this game does not reproduce, and how much the thin usage evidence can say about two offenses that appear to run through a single back.

Maryland's streaks stand out, but all of them are tied to home games: eight straight losses at home, eight straight as a home underdog, and six straight games failing to cover in non-division, in-conference home games. Maryland is the visitor on Saturday, so those runs describe a different setting. They show a team that has struggled in front of its own crowd, not one with a known road pattern. USC's five straight losses as an away underdog have the same problem, since the Trojans are at home.

The one streak that does match the setting is USC's four straight games going under the total overall. It describes how recent Trojans games have played out, and it is not a forecast. It fits with the passing volume in each team's latest game: Jayden Maiava had 22 attempts against the Ohio State Buckeyes on October 31, and Malik Washington had 18 attempts against the Purdue Boilermakers on November 7. Both have led their teams in attempts in each of the last three games, so the quarterback roles are settled, but single-game attempt counts are a small sample.

On the ground, both teams have a clear primary back. King Miller has 43 carries over USC's last three games, with Waymond Jordan at 18. DeJuan Williams has 42 carries over Maryland's last three, with Iverson Howard at 11. Receiving work is similarly concentrated: Trent Mosley has 19 receptions over USC's last three games and Chris Durr Jr. has 16 for Maryland. These are three-game windows, so they describe recent usage rather than season-long roles.

Conditions look benign. The forecast is 64°F with a 4 mph wind from the NNW and partly cloudy skies, which should not interfere with the passing or kicking game. Neither team reports an injury, so the players above are the ones expected to take the field.

Taken together, the evidence is thin and mostly descriptive. Maryland's slump and USC's away-underdog losses come from settings that do not apply, the usage numbers cover only three games, and nothing cleanly separates the two sides. USC's run of unders is the most relevant item, and even that is a record of past games.