The USC Men’s Rugby Club traveled south to the home field of Los Angeles Rugby Club for a “home” game against Cal State University Fullerton in week four of Gold Coast Collegiate Conference play, but with expectations high after last week's victory over San Diego, Head Coach Domininic Riebli called his team's defeat of CSUF "pedestrian."

In the opening minutes, USC kept the ball in the Fullerton half, and after a penalty, USC center Joey Krassenstein positioned the team nicely with a kick to touch. That allowed for a driving maul straight off the lineout. Having moved the maul steps from the tryline, Jonny So peeled off the side and scored his first for the team.

For the next fifteen minutes, possession flipped back and forth via handling errors and turnovers in contact. Fullerton opted to keep USC in their own half by sending multiple kicks deep into Trojan territory. But the USC back three of Mitch Suzuki, Jeff Cohen, and Connor Patenaude dealt with the high balls and heavy pressure from an aggressive Fullerton defense. In the end, it was a kick that burned Fullerton, as an errant punt went straight to Krassenstein, who collected, stepped through a scattered defense, and touched down in the corner. The conversion missed again and it was 10-0.

Minutes before halftime, USC put on an display of technical rugby when Suzuki collected a high ball and sent it through the hands of flanker Michael Cesar and center Dima Veremeenko to allow Krassenstein to draw the last defender and feed it to Jeff Cohen for the wing's first try for his club. The conversion was successful and the half ended 17-0 for USC.

In the second half, Fullerton came out with much greater aggression and scored their first of the game when their backs moved the ball out wide inside USC’s 22. Fullerton was stopped just short of the line, but the forwards picked up and dove over, making it 17-5.

The Trojans regained momentum when Krassenstein got his second of the game after Cesar fed him a perfect pass close to the touch line. The conversion from Adam Bushell was good, putting the score at 24-5.

Moments later the Trojans found themselves deep in attacking territory and were benefactors of a Fullerton penalty. Halfback Guido Scassellati quick tapped and kicked across the field to Patenaude, who displayed great skill in receiving the ball, avoiding the touchline, and running it in for the try. The conversion was good, making the score 31-5.

In the closing minutes, Fullerton hammered the ball deep into Trojan territory, forcing USC to defend on their goal line. With tired bodies after 80 minutes of rugby, CSUF broke through the USC defense and got their second try of the match. Final score: 31-10.

"Now that we have a large enough sample set by which to judge our players, we coaches no longer need to measure ourselves against opposition," said Riebli. "Rather, we can measure ourselves against past performance. From that point of view, we have not progressed at a rate that makes us a legitimate contender in the national picture. The players still revert to form when things don’t go to plan. Fullerton play a scrappy game based on slowing the pace of play down and encountering favorable individual matchups. We needed to respond with quick, clinical play at the breakdown and in the set-piece and simply didn’t do either."

Riebli said the team has to do a better job of trusting each other - that lack of trust showing itself in over-committing to rucks that appear won - and embracing the game plan.

"We have two more opportunities to see if we can get all oars rowing in the same direction," said Riebli, referring to this weekend's clash with Santa Barbara City College, and then Grand Canyon on March 5. The SBCC game will be played at Riebli's old club, Santa Monica, and will be preceded by some youth games.

- Game report produced by Adam Bushell.