LOS ANGELES — When USC stuns Ohio State on Halloween night, it does so in a way nobody saw coming and everybody will remember. The 25th-ranked Trojans needed all of two plays to announce their intentions Saturday, then spent the next three hours dismantling the No. 2 Buckeyes 30-18 at a rain-dampened Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in one of the biggest upsets of the college football season.
Lincoln Riley came into the night under real pressure. His Trojans had just been embarrassed at Wisconsin, and five seasons into his tenure he still had no signature win at USC. By the time the goalposts came down and the fans had finished storming the field, he had one.
By the time the goalposts came down, he had one.
Second Play, First Statement
Jayden Maiava never gave Ohio State a chance to settle in. On just the second snap of the game, the USC quarterback found freshman Trent Mosley over the middle, and Mosley did the rest — 69 yards, weaving through the Buckeye secondary, touchdown. The Coliseum’s sold-out crowd hadn’t finished taking its seats.
It set the tone for everything that followed. Mosley finished with five catches for 101 yards and added a 44-yard punt return that flipped the field in the second half. Maiava was steady all night: 15 of 22 for 222 yards, a touchdown and one interception, plus a rushing score for Waymond Jordan (9-yard run) set up by Mosley’s long return.
Caden Chittenden drilled three field goals, including one with 1:46 left that sealed it.
How USC Stuns Ohio State, Play by Play
The scoreboard tells the story of a team that punched first and never let go:
- Ohio State managed only three field goals from its first five drives against a USC defense that played its best game of the Riley era.
- The Trojans led 20-9 at halftime and stretched it to 27-9 late in the third quarter when King Miller punched in a 1-yard touchdown — set up by a spectacular 70-yard catch-and-run from freshman tight end Mark Bowman, who hurdled a defender and broke two more tackles on the play of the night.
- Ohio State did not score a touchdown until 2:12 remained, when backup quarterback Luke Fahey found Jeremiah Smith from a yard out. Smith’s catch made him the Big Ten’s all-time receiving touchdown leader, a footnote in a nightmare.
- The two-point conversion failed. USC recovered the onside kick. Game over. It was the kind of complete performance — fast start, suffocating defense, no panic — that explains exactly how USC stuns Ohio State on this night.
A Defense That Finally Showed Up
For five years, Riley’s USC teams have been defined by defense that arrived late or not at all. On the night USC stuns Ohio State, in a light, steady rain, the Trojans didn’t allow a touchdown in the first 57 minutes.
The 30 points USC hung on the scoreboard were more than Ohio State’s vaunted defense had allowed in a single game since 2024. The Buckeyes were shut out entirely in the third quarter, and their 18 points came almost entirely off field goals.
Ohio State was playing without starting quarterback Julian Sayin, who is out indefinitely after injuring his throwing arm in the Oct. 17 win over Indiana. True freshman Luke Fahey made his first career start and finished 21 of 38 for 260 yards — respectable numbers that never quite translated into sustained drives.
Ohio State’s Halloween Nightmare
The loss drops Ohio State to 6-2 (4-1 Big Ten) — the Buckeyes haven’t lost two games this early in a season since 2011, the year before Urban Meyer arrived in Columbus. It also continued a painful streak: Ohio State hasn’t beaten USC at the Coliseum since 1946.
The Buckeyes entered Saturday at 6-1 with national championship aspirations and one of the most talented rosters in the country; they leave Los Angeles with no margin for error.
USC, meanwhile, is 7-2 (4-2 Big Ten) with its season suddenly reborn — a first top-five win at the Coliseum since 2015, and Riley’s first over a top-five team since 2017, when he was at Oklahoma (also against Ohio State).
Seven Ranked Teams Fall
The night USC stuns Ohio State was the headline, but Week 9 was chaos across the country. Seven ranked teams fell on Halloween:
- **No. 1 Miami 38, North Carolina 35:** The Hurricanes nearly blew it in Chapel Hill, surviving only after two North Carolina onside-kick recoveries were called back on penalties. Darian Mensah threw for 274 yards and three touchdowns to keep Miami unbeaten (8-0) ahead of next week’s Notre Dame showdown.
- **No. 3 Georgia 27, No. 20 Florida 8:** The Bulldogs rolled in their rivalry game.
- **No. 4 Indiana 23, Minnesota 16 (OT):** The defending national champions survived a second straight week: dueling 60-yard field goals from Luke Drzewiecki and Paddy McAteer forced overtime, where backup QB Grant Wilson hit Charlie Becker for a 25-yard score on the first play.
- **Iowa 30, No. 25 Wisconsin 0:** Hank Brown threw for 222 yards and two touchdowns in a shutout that will end the Badgers’ short stay in the rankings.
- **Iowa State 51, No. 24 Oklahoma State 49:** Kyle Konrardy’s 34-yard field goal as time expired won a 1,114-yard shootout in Ames.
- **No. 19 SMU** fell 30-27 to Syracuse, and **No. 20 Northwestern** lost 34-26 at Oregon.
What the Upset Means for the Playoff Race
The timing could hardly be more dramatic. The first College Football Playoff rankings of the season drop Tuesday, Nov. 3, at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN — the first look at how the selection committee views the 12-team field.
The Buckeyes looked like a top seed; now, with two losses, they’re in a seeding fight. For USC, a playoff berth is suddenly alive again. The Oregon and Wisconsin losses still stain the resume, but beating No. 2 changes everything — and with Indiana, Maryland and No. 7 UCLA still ahead, the Trojans control their fate.
Five years into the Lincoln Riley era, the Trojans finally have their signature win. That is what happens when USC stuns Ohio State: five years of waiting end on Halloween night, in the rain, against the No. 2 team in America.
*Photo: Wikimedia Commons — panorama from the Sept. 13, 2008 USC vs. Ohio State game at the LA Memorial Coliseum. (Photographer and specific license details were not retrievable from the file page; the file is hosted on Wikimedia Commons’ free media repository.)*