Lincoln Riley, Justin Wilcox explain odd halftime situation in USC - Cal game

It wouldn’t be a Pac-12 game without at least one officiating decision that nobody has ever seen before. That was the case Saturday afternoon as the USC Trojans took on the California Golden Bears as somehow, USC snapped the final play of the first half after halftime.

USC head coach Lincoln Riley called it “unique.” Cal head coach Justin Wilcox said he’s never seen it before and wonders if it’s ever happened before anywhere.

With 12 seconds remaining in the first half and USC facing a 4th-and-11 from the Cal 45-yard line, quarterback Caleb Williams dropped back and scrambled a bit before finding tight end Lake McRee downfield for a 29-yard gain. He was tackled by a Cal defender as time ran out and the teams went into the locker rooms for halftime.

Except, Riley didn’t see it that way. Riley stayed on the sideline speaking to officials as the 20-minute halftime clock never started. He continued having a conversation with them for several minutes as more personnel came onto the field and began speaking into radios. Eventually, Wilcox was brought out of the Cal locker room and, clearly upset by whatever was going on, began animatedly speaking to the officials.

Riley explained the scene after the game. As McRee caught the pass and began running, Riley took off up the sideline in order to get in view of an official in order to call a timeout whenever he was tackled.

“When I saw him go down, I immediately looked up because I’m running down and there was time on the clock,” Riley said. “It was going from two to one when I looked up. And I knew I looked up just slightly after he was down.”

The officials told Riley that the review booth already looked at it and ordered the on-field officials to send the teams into the locker room.

“I said, ‘Well that’s fine. I have a time out and I want to review it,'” Riley said, crediting the on-field officials for how they handled the situation while being put in a difficult spot by the Pac-12 command center that ordered the teams off the field.

“They went back and looked at it and, I don’t know, I guess they said they found some new view or something,” Riley said. “I didn’t think it was that hard. There’s either time on the clock or there’s not.”

Ultimately, the challenge proved successful and the officials put one second on the clock. But with the teams already in the locker room and the halftime show in progress, the decision was made to play that one second after the teams came back out to start the “second half.”

Riley said Wilcox was “pissed” when he heard the ruling.

“If I were him, I would have been, too,” Riley said.

Riley said he worried initially about using so much of his 20-minute time with the team in the locker room standing out on the field talking to officials. But he then realized the halftime timer never started, which made him more comfortable seeing the challenge through.

Wilcox said the decision had “zero impact on the outcome of the game.” He wasn’t clear about what happened between having his team told to go into the locker room and then being told there would be one second put back on the first-half clock.

“Something happened,” Wilcox said. “I don’t know what. I can’t answer that. I was told to come back out and confer with the officials and they were going to have one play with one second to start — it’s not the second half, it was the end of the first half after the band played. But that came from Pac-12 review. So the only people that can answer that is the Pac-12 office, and the head of officials and the Pac-12 game review board and the review officials. But not the officials on the field. They had nothing to do with that. They were relaying the information from the booth. So I’m sure I’ll get some email or call but I don’t really care. That’s what happened and people deserve to know. It did not have any bearing on the outcome of the game. But that’s what happened.”

For all the chaos, the payoff was not what the Trojans wanted. USC was able to attempt a 33-yard field goal (after Cal took its final timeout of the first half), but kicker Denis Lynch pushed it wide left.

“After all that, we missed the damn thing,” Riley said.

Between Riley getting sick and missing practices on Monday and Tuesday, plus the small on-field protest that delayed the start of the game, and then the halftime issue, things were a little strange for the Trojans ahead of Halloweed.

“This whole week was weird, so it was fitting,” Riley said.