USC Spring Football Scrimmage
Game days at the Coliseum are going to have a distinctly different look this fall, and fans got their first taste of that difference Saturday as the Trojans’ annual scrimmage closed out spring camp.
Head Coach Lane Kiffin put in his first day of work at the Coliseum by featuring a few unfamiliar faces. Freshman running back Dillon Baxter wowed the crowd with a number of runs, finishing the day with 129 yards rushing and one touchdown, while backup quarterback Mitch Mustain saw his first taste of extended action and made the most of it, finishing with 299 yards passing and five touchdowns.
Mustain led the offense for much of the day, switching off with Matt Barkley at quarterback early on, then taking over for Barkley after he suffered a minor injury to his throwing hand halfway through the game.
The offense overcame early struggles to put away the defensive unit 54-30 in a modified scoring system.
Though Mustain’s performance was impressive, Kiffin said without hesitation after the scrimmage that Barkley was still the starting quarterback heading into the summer break.
Despite losing a number of star players to the NFL draft last month, a few of the veterans on the squad had big days, including fullback Stanley Havili, who led the Trojans with five catches for 129 yards and three touchdowns.
Senior Travon Patterson added two more scores for the offense, including one from Barkley on the play that sent the sophomore quarterback to the sidelines. Defensive lineman Jurrell Casey put the hit on Barkley, a violation of practice rules, and was sidelined for the rest of the day as a result. Barkley said after the game that in a real game situation, he was confident that he would have continued to play.
When the Trojans next step on the field as a team, they will be joined with a number of highly-rated recruits, including tackle Seantrel Henderson and tight end Xavier Grimble, both of whom will provide depth for relatively thin positions on the Trojans’ depth chart.
