The USC Trojans (7-5) will take on the Louisville Cardinals (10-3) Wednesday in the DIRECTV Holiday Bowl at 5 p.m. PST at Petco Park in San Diego.
This will be USC and Louisville’s first time meeting, with both teams coming off losses. The Trojans lost to UCLA 38-20 on November 18 and the Cardinals lost to Florida State 16-6 on December 2 in the ACC Championship Game.
Louisville is entering this matchup after a much more successful season than USC. The Cardinals’ 7-1 ACC record this season matched their all-time best, and they are currently ranked No. 16 in the AP Poll and No. 15 in the College Football Playoff rankings. The Trojans are unranked and went 5-4 in the Pac-12.
In total defense, according to the NCAA, Louisville is ranked No. 16 in the country, while USC is No. 120. Offensively, however, USC is ranked No. 11 and Louisville sits at No. 42.
Both teams come into the game with top players missing from their lineups. The Trojans are missing 20 players, including reigning Heisman Trophy winner junior quarterback Caleb Williams. Redshirt junior running back MarShawn Lloyd and senior wide receiver Brenden Rice both recently declared for the NFL Draft, and junior wide receiver Mario Williams recently entered the transfer portal.
Defensively, USC had eight players opt out of the game, including two starting defensive players who entered the transfer portal – freshman linebacker Tackett Curtis and sophomore cornerback Domani Jackson.
Redshirt sophomore quarterback Miller Moss will be USC’s starting quarterback. In the three games he played this season for the Trojans, he completed 23 of 32 passes for 309 yards, threw for a touchdown and added two rushing touchdowns. Over the 11 games he has played across his three seasons at USC, Moss has gone 43 of 59 for 542 yards with three touchdowns and no interceptions.
“He’s had a unique journey in his time … he’s a guy that has really hung in there [and] he has continued to put in work, even though he wasn’t the starter,” USC head coach Lincoln Riley said about Moss. “He’s learned our offense as good as any player on a roster and I think really earned the respect of the team. … You could argue he’s been waiting three years for an opportunity like this.”
On the other side, the Cardinals will be without 11 players, with only three of them on the offensive side. However, two of the opt-outs are the Cardinals’ strongest assets – redshirt junior running back Jawhar Jordan and redshirt junior wide receiver Jamari Thrash, who both declared for the NFL Draft. Jordan and Thrash were Louisville’s top rusher and receiver, respectively, in both yards and touchdowns.
Louisville will be led by graduate quarterback Jack Plummer who, in his first season with the Cardinals, completed 235 of 370 passes for 3,063 yards and 21 touchdowns, in addition to 12 interceptions. Plummer began his college career at Purdue, where he played three seasons, before transferring to Cal Berkeley for his senior year. Plummer is familiar with USC given his Pac-12 experience, as he threw for over 400 yards and three touchdowns at the Coliseum as a Golden Bear in 2022, though the Trojans won that game 41-35.
“It is a unique game in terms of the new players, the different players that are going to be available, how you piece it together [and] how you handle these last several weeks,” Riley said.
Additionally, these teams share a common opponent from the 2023 regular season. Louisville beat Notre Dame 33-20 in October, while USC fell to the Fighting Irish 48-20 just a week later.
This will be USC’s fourth time competing in the Holiday Bowl and Louisville’s first. The Trojans’ last Holiday Bowl appearance was in 2014, when they beat Nebraska 45-42. However, USC is coming off of a loss in their most recent bowl game; they lost last year’s Cotton Bowl to Tulane 46-45. Louisville competed in the Fenway Bowl last year, defeating Cincinnati 24-7.
Overall, Louisville’s postseason record is 12-13, while USC’s is 34-20.
Louisville is favored to win the game by a touchdown, but it is expected to be an intriguing matchup given the absence of key players on both teams.
Kickoff is at 5 p.m. PST, with an eggnog bath at stake for either Louisville’s Jeff Brohm or USC’s Lincoln Riley.