USC Coach Hoping to Mash Buckeyes Once More Today

Larry Smith and buckeyes. The ties go back a lifetime.

When he was 6, Smith would shove them in his pocket and walk around his hometown of Van Wert, Ohio, throwing them at his playmates or mashing them into the ground, as was the custom in the neighborhood. (For those uninformed about the Ohio landscape, buckeyes are distinctive nuts indigenous to the area.)

A decade later, Smith was walking around the neighborhood with visions of Buckeyes of a very different nature, the large-bodied type in scarlet and gray. For those uninformed about college football lore, the Buckeyes of Ohio State, long a regional powerhouse, are known and revered across the Ohio landscape.

Smith dreamed of playing for Ohio State. He never did. He also dreamed of coaching the Buckeyes. He never did that, either.

And now, as coach of the USC Trojans, he finds the team of his boyhood standing at the first crossroads of his season.

Facing an improving Illinois squad, the Trojans stumbled out of the starting gate on opening day and fell flat on their faces, losing, 14-13.

People wondered if USC, which had been figured to contend for the national title, just wasn’t that good.

Then, facing an overmatched Utah State team in its second game, the Trojans broke out of the gate and didn’t look back. They never lost a yard, never punted and hardly broke a sweat in winning, 66-10.

People knew USC wasn’t that good.

So which is the real USC?

Along comes Ohio State to perhaps lend some perspective. Coming off a 4-6-1 year, the Buckeyes opened their 1989 season last week with a 37-13 victory over Oklahoma State. Powered by a strong offense but sporting a still-unproven, young defense, Ohio State lacks consistency and maturity but has enough talent to serve as an early-season test for the favored Trojans when the teams meet today at the Coliseum in the first half of the Big Ten-Pacific 10 doubleheader, to be followed by UCLA-Michigan at the Rose Bowl.

Running the offense is junior quarterback Greg Frey, coming off a year in which he passed for 2,028 yards. He completed 16 of 21 passes for a career-high 285 yards and two touchdowns against Oklahoma State, moving into sixth place on the team’s all-time passing yardage chart. Frey, the collegiate leader in passing efficiency at 212.0, throws to tight end Jeff Ellis, split end Jeff Graham and flankers Bobby Olive and Bernard Edwards.

“He was like our football team last year,” said Coach John Cooper of Frey. “He was very inconsistent. Maybe the first half of a game would be good and the second half bad. Or vice versa.”

Also in the backfield is tailback Carlos Snow, a 5-foot 9-inch, 190-pounder coming off arthroscopic knee surgery in the summer. Snow injured himself stepping on a sprinkler head while jogging. But he made it back to the lineup for the opener and ran for 67 yards and two touchdowns against Oklahoma State.

“He’s about 80% right now,” Cooper said. “He’s certainly not 100%. He’s got great quickness, the same kind of back (Ricky) Ervins is for USC.”

Snow has the advantage of running behind an offensive line that averages 6-5 1/2 and 295 pounds. At the heavy end of the scales are two 300-pounders--tackle Tim Moxley at 6-7 and 310, and guard Jeff Davidson, 6-6 and 305. Another player to watch is Joe Staysniak, 6-5 and 290.

The defense is led by strong safety Zack Dumas and linebacker Derek Isaman. It’s a defense that needs leadership, because 10 members of the first two defensive units are freshmen.

“I think we’re headed in the right direction,” Cooper said. “We’ll get this program turned around. It’s just a matter of time.”

Smith figures it’s about time for him, too. Now in his third season at USC, he already been to the Rose Bowl twice and beaten UCLA twice. But he has never beaten a Midwest team, losing twice to Michigan State, twice to Notre Dame, once to Michigan and then to Illinois this season.

Why? Smith has three good reasons.

“No. 1, they seem to be more physical than we are,” he said. “No. 2, up until the Illinois game, we’ve averaged five turnovers a game against Midwestern teams. And No. 3, they find a way to win and we don’t.

“We’ve got a hell of a big challenge against us. This is going to help prove to ourselves what we really are.”

Long gone are the feelings Smith once had that he was a Buckeye. But he can still remember vividly those fall afternoons when he would be out hunting with his father, Leo, and manage to sneak off to a radio to check the progress of his beloved Buckeyes.

He can still remember the thrill he felt when Ohio State’s legendary coach, Woody Hayes, actually started recruiting him while he was a defensive end-tight end at Van Wert High.

“I’d go up there and look around and, each time, those guys got bigger and faster than me,” Smith said. “I knew my capabilities and I got scared off.”

Instead, he went to Bowling Green, where he did well enough to become a 12th-round pick in the National Football League draft.

Instead, he went into high school coaching, but still came back to Ohio State each spring for a coaching clinic.

It was there that he met his wife, Cheryl, a student at the time.

And where will her loyalties be today?

“She knows where the paycheck comes from,” Smith said.

Trojan Notes

A crowd of 80,000 is expected today. . . . John Cooper and Larry Smith were rivals in a different vein back in the days when Smith was the coach at Arizona and Cooper was at Arizona State. Smith won both their meetings. . . . Cooper faced USC twice while at ASU and came away victorious on both occasions, 24-0 in 1985 and 29-20 in ’86.