By Ben Malcolmson
USCRipsIt
Trojans focus on “new beginnings” as they turn their attention to the next win.
In the bowels of the Coliseum after Saturday’s game, the celebratory chants and songs produced by the Stanford players could be heard so loudly and so clearly through several walls.
Usually, it’s the other way around.
The score — 24 for the visitors, 23 for the home team. Yeah, usually that’s the other way around, too.
The words that best encapsulate the mood and the future of the Trojans came from
Coach Pete Carroll only minutes after the game as he addressed his team.
“It’s not the team with the better players that wins a ballgame,” Carroll said in a locker room void of noise yet so full of painful emotion. “It’s the team that plays the best that’s going to win — I’ve believed that all my life.
“We’re not going to point fingers because we’re a team. We don’t do that. It’s about new beginnings now. How are we going to start again? Life’s full of questions like that. What are you going to do now? What are we going to do now?”
The loss hurts tonight, but it’ll hurt so much more tomorrow. And at the team's weight lifting sessions on Monday morning. And at the team meeting on Monday afternoon. And at practice every single day in the coming week.
That sick, hopeless feeling doesn’t go away until there are triple zeroes on the clock at the Trojans’ next win.
Time to start working for that.
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Ben Malcolmson is the Director of Online Media for USCRipsIt.com. You can contact him at Ben@USCRipsIt.com. 
