Ping: USC fans or anyone living in SoCal

[Wolfpack]

I'm looking for help on the 2002 USC Trojans. Over on the Dynasty board I'm running a single-elim tournament involving all 117 D-IA teams in 2002. I've reached the final which pits USC versus Ohio State. I intend to use a very detailed game for this championship (to this point I had been using a quick-play game) that utilizes rosters and statistics. Ohio State's website has the stats and depth charts I need and, with some help from Butter_Of_69, the basic formations that OSU tended to use. However, USC's website only lists the statistics from last year. They don't have anything for a roster listing or depth chart. Can someone help out on these points?

Thanks.

[MrBug708]

Check the archive there, check out www.wearesc.com

[Wolfpack]

Thanks. That helps a bit. The wearesc.com website does list the 2002 roster, but I'm still needing at least some kind of two-deep chart as well as a basic description of SC's normal offensive formation, i.e. is it one back in the backfield or two backs? On third down and long, would it be three receivers or four (and is the TE replaced or the FB/RB)? One other thing I just thought of is who would be substituted in on passing downs on defense. This also applies to OSU as well.

Thanks.

[MrBug708]

Off the top of my head, they ran 3 receiver sets a lot, but they used their fullback, Mackenzie, often on third and short plays, as the RB however. Carson Palmer was amazing at the 3 step drop because anymore time meant he had to think a bit more which wasn't good for USC. Just got to BYU back in the 80's and 90's. That offense is similiar to what USC uses now because of Norm Chow

[Wolfpack]

Here's the depth chart for USC as I could glean from their website, starters in bold:

QB
Carson Palmer
Matt Cassel
Matt Leinhart

RB
Justin Fargas
Sultan McCullough
Herschel Dennis

FB
Malaefou MacKenzie
Sunny Byrd
Lee Webb

WR
Kareem Kelly
Mike Williams*
Keary Kolbert
Grant Mattos
Sandy Fletcher
*-Williams apparently had a very large season, but it doesn't seem that he started any games. I take he would be the third receiver in a three-receiver set which USC will use frequently as I play them.

TE
Alex Holmes
Dominique Byrd
Gregg Guenther, Jr

LT
Jacob Rogers
Phillip Eaves

LG
Lenny Vandermeade (?)
Travis Watkins
(?)-Vandermeade got injured sometime during the season but I could not figure out from any of the player bios who seemed to be in his place after his injury.

C
Norm Katnik
Derek Graf
Joe Boskovich (LS on PKs)
Matt Hayward (LS on punts)

RG
Zach Wilson
Derek Graf (??)
(??)-Wilson as most good offensive linemen are, was durable and I could not really find anything to indicate who would have been second at RG. Graf's bio mentions he could play guard so I put him here for depth purposes.

RT
Winston Justice
Eric Torres (???)
(???)-This one is a mystery to me. Torres's bio says he'd be the starter in '02 after starting all of '01, but it looks like Winston Justice took his job. However, there is no data for the 2002 season for Torres to indicate what happened to him after losing the job. I can only assume he would have backed up Justice, but since Justice never got injured, he never played.

PK
Ryan Killeen
David Davis

P
Tom Malone
Tommy Huff

DE
Kenechi Udeze
Doyal Butler
Omar Nazel
Van Brown

DT
Mike Patterson
Anthony Daye
Nate Steinbacher
Bernard Riley
Shaun Cody**
LaJuan Ramsey
**-Cody was injured about halfway into last year, but the bio in general indicates that when healthy he was one of their better d-linemen. I am uncertain who I'll start since if Cody's injury hadn't happened, he almost certainly would have started during the entire year.

SLB
Matt Grootegoed
Dallas Sartz

MLB
Mike Pollard
Oscar Lua

WLB
Melvin Simmons
Bobby Otani

CB
Darrell Rideaux
Justin Wyatt
Marcell Allmond
William Buchanon

SS
Troy Polamalu
Jason Leach

FS
DeShaun Hill
John Walker
Mike Ross

================
Does this look reasonably correct to those in the know? If it is, I'll have the teams rated out by player over the next couple of days and hopefully get the championship game going later this week.

Thanks.

[MrBug708]

Shaun Cody is one of the best DT's in the nation, he's your starter

[Wolfpack]

Thanks, Bug. As this is a one-off tournament and not a season replay, I'll give Cody the nod (and the higher rating since starters get higher ratings than bench players, though that's a bit hard to measure with college players due to the numbers involved). I hope I can get these teams rated out quickly. I'm dying to play this matchup now that college football has started up again.

[Chief Rum]

Anyone find it weird that these USC questions were answered by a Bruin fan? Where are our Trojan fans?

CR

[MrBug708]

Well, I spent half my time on USC's ESPN message board since the Bruin board is a bit quiet these days

[Eaglesfan27]

I missed this thread until the main answer was already given, and didn't have anything to add to the thread.

[G-Man]

Can you input the actual names of the college players into TCY now?

[dawgfan]

I would suggest going to the official USC Football website (http://usctrojans.ocsn.com/sports/m-footbl/usc-m-footbl-body.html) and clicking the 2003 media guide link and check the 2002 season review. This will bring up an Adobe Acrobat version of the media guide and give you game by game starter info, game by game player stats, summeries of each game and more. You can also access player bios for current players and 2002 grads. This ought to give you enough info to make educated analyses of the 2002 USC squad.

[Wolfpack]

That's ultimately what I did and it's where I finally decided on lineup given above. Pure-bred pain-in-the-ass to do, but I did it.

I'm now having to clear a bit of a hurdle with Ohio State's pass offense. They have a better-than-average offense on a per-pass-play basis, yardage-wise but their offensive line is horrendous at protecting the QB (30 sacks on Krenzel on just a combined total of 279 pass attempts and sacks recorded). It basically means that if Krenzel is upright long enough, OSU can move the ball through the air well, but he's going to end up on his fanny a lot given he'll get zero help from the line in front of him. Fortunately, OSU runs the ball 65% of the time, so they're not going to be airing it out a whole lot. I'm consulting with the game designer to determine the best course of action for rating the OSU players even so. In the meantime, I'll continue to work on the remaining ratings.

[Wolfpack]

Progress update: I've managed to rate out Ohio State's roster and have rated out Southern Cal's offense (I still feel strange putting the team's leading receiver on the bench, though he'll be used very frequently). The defense and special teams shouldn't take too long and once that's done, I'll be ready to kick off. I'll probably start a separate thread on the dynasty board apart from the original one with a link pointing to the other thread in each of them.