USC bettors found out the hard way that anything and everything is possible during college football bowl season. Although the Trojans were ahead of Tulane for nearly the entire game, the Green Wave somehow pulled off a miraculous comeback to secure the Cotton Bowl win.
Tulane was down 45-30 with 4:30 remaining in the game, when a sequence of events went down that nobody saw coming. After allowing a touchdown 26 seconds after taking the fifteen point lead, the Trojans fumbled a kick to pin themselves inside their own one-yard line. Tulane was able to force a safety, and then capped a 66-yard game-winning touchdown drive when quarterback Michael Pratt found Alex Bauman for a six-yard touchdown with nine seconds to go in the game. They took their first lead of the game on the ensuing extra point, and would go on to win 46-45.
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The Green Wave cap off an incredible season with a NY6 bowl win! pic.twitter.com/pgRWy4tsv1
— ESPN College Football (@ESPNCFB) January 2, 2023
USC Bettors Undergo Brutal Beat in Cotton Bowl
USC bettors were understandably left in awe after the game went final. They closed as 2.5-point favorites, -149 on the money line (DraftKings).
The Green Wave were able to survive a Cotton Bowl record five touchdown passes from USC quarterback Caleb Williams to pull off the shocking comeback late in the fourth quarter. Like many of the USC backers, Williams shared his extreme disappointment after his team squandered the lead, wasting his historic performance.
“Our job on offense is to score, that’s all we can control,” Williams said after the game, per USC beat writer Adam Grosbard. “We can lead from the sideline, lead when you’re on the field. Other than that, can’t control that.”
After the game, the bulk of the blame was transferred onto USC defensive coordinator Alex Grinch, who Lincoln Riley brought with from Oklahoma. In the first year with Grinch leading the defense, it was clear all season long that USC’s Achilles heel was their defense, and that was the case once again in the Cotton Bowl. They allowed Pratt 234 passing yards despite completing just seven passes. But Tulane did most of their damage the ground, running 36 times for a combined 305 yards and five touchdowns.
Riley quickly deflected a question when about whether or not he was considering making a change to his staff in the offseason.
According to the ESPN gamecast, USC had a 99.8% chance of winning th game after going up by 15 points late in the fourth quarter.
While USC bettors are still left wondering what exactly just happened this afternoon, Lincoln Riley and co. are going to have to find a way to greatly improve their defense to reach the championship goals next season. It was an opposite story for Tulane bettors after the Green Wave’s improbable comeback.
