USC

Adam Abrams kicked a big field goal when it mattered last year against Notre Dame, making the game-winner with 1:05 left in a 20-17 victory.

Saturday night, he missed three in a game when--fortunately for USC--it didn’t make much difference, a 35-6 victory over San Diego State.

His trouble started at the end of warm-ups, and mushroomed.

“He’d been kicking great all week,” special teams coach Shawn Slocum said. “But he hooked a couple right at the end of warm-ups.”

From that seed of doubt came misses at 39, 29 and 44 yards--a startling turnaround for a kicker who had made 12 consecutive field goals after recovering from a shaky start last season.

“What happens with kickers is, they miss one and then over-emphasize the correction,” Slocum said. “The first one, he pushed right [after hooking left in warm-ups.] The second, he overcompensated the other way and hooked. The third one, that was a pretty good ball and had a chance, but it was about at the top of his range [Abrams’ longest at USC is 46 yards.]

“He just had a bad night.”

Abrams has been through this before--he missed his first field goal last season and two of his first six extra points--and is well-equipped to recover. He even has worked with a sports psychologist, and Slocum talked with him after the game.

“He still has his confidence,” Slocum said. “He’s a real good kicker who had a bad night. What you’d like is for a kicker to get to the point of saying, ‘I missed a field goal, I know what I did wrong, and not over-emphasize the correction.’ ”

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Oregon State, off to a 2-0 start this season with a revamped offense under former USC assistant Mike Riley, hasn’t won three consecutive games since 1970 and has lost 24 in a row to USC. The last Beaver victory was by a 3-0 score in 1967.

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Next Up for USC

Who: Oregon State

Where: Coliseum

When: Saturday, 7 p.m.

TV: Fox Sports West 2

Radio: XTRA (690)