By Myke Williams

Sports Reporter

Two weeks and two weak opponents is a bad combination. The USC Trojans found that out last Saturday when Stanford defeated the Trojans 41-31 in USC’s first real test of the 2015 season.

David Shaw’s Cardinals played smart, disciplined football while the Trojans committed eight costly penalties. The Trojans won the first two games of the season against Arkansas State 55-6 and 59-9 against Idaho.

It does not get any easier for the Trojans because they travel to the valley of the sun to face the Arizona State Sun Devils Saturday at 7:30 p.m. The game will be televised on ESPN. Right now the Arizona State game is the most important game of the season.

If USC wins a tough game on the road it will be 3-1 and 1-0 in the Southern Division going into a bye week. If they lose the hole will only get deeper.

“It’s a long season but this may be the turning in our season,” said USC quarterback Cody Kessler after the loss to Stanford. “How we respond to adversity is very important.”

USC could not stop Stanford’s senior quarterback Kevin Hogan and now they Trojans will try to stop another senior signal caller in Arizona State’s Mike Bercovici, who threw a last second Hail Mary pass to beat USC last year in Los Angeles.

Stanford was eight for 13 in third down situations and Hogan ran seven times for 28 yards.

“Football is a humbling sport from one week to the next,” said USC head coach Steve Sarkisian last Saturday. “Now we need to make sure we don’t lay in the weeds of woe is me. We need to get back up and play Arizona State. We also need to have a really good week of practice and beat a team in our division.”

USC’s offense scored enough points to beat Stanford but the defense has a lot of work to do if they expect to stop Bercovici and Arizona State. He threw for 317 yards and three touchdowns against New Mexico.

Kessler completed 25 of 32 passes for 272 yards and three touchdowns against Stanford.