LOS ANGELES — In the end, after this most un-Troy of seasons, autumn for everyone else but a true Trojans fall, they fittingly arrived less than USC-ready.

And they did so just one week after we were told that football around here is all about competing and “just battling,” that there’s something honorable in strong-arming respect, even if it means rubbing a beaten opponent’s nose in it.
“It was definitely less than last week,” freshman quarterback Matt Barkley said when asked about the Trojans lacking energy so completely that the entire Coliseum seemed winded. “I’m not sure why that was, but you could feel a difference today.”
So seven days after thumping their chests in victory over UCLA, the Trojans were thumped in the closing minutes Saturday by Arizona, 21-17.
They were forced to watch someone else make the deciding offensive play late, and then watch someone else smother the desperate quarterback clutching to his team’s faint hopes one final time.
Most ironically of all, they were forced to watch someone else take a knee as the clock drained. This time, though, there was no pointed talk of disrespect afterward.
A week later, a world apart.
With only salvaging their lost season to play for the Trojans instead flopped onto the scrap heap.
They were being offered a Holiday. But now they’ll end up working even harder.
This most irregular of regular seasons couldn’t have ended any more appropriately.
“There have been a lot of lessons learned this year,” said Barkley, the 19-year-old.
“There is a lot I can take into the offseason and a lot into next season.”
He might one day make history at USC, and we don’t mean history like being the first Trojans quarterback to play in the Poinsettia Bowl (Dec. 23). Barkley could become one of the school’s all-timers.
If so, he’ll look back at his first season and probably shake his head or laugh or a little of both.
He opened this game by missing on his first attempt and having his second intercepted. In the first two quarters, only two Trojans caught Barkley passes, for a total of 57 yards.
In the third quarter, under significant duress, he flipped the ball left-handed to Brandon Carswell . . . for a loss of seven yards.
Barkley, though, also pinpointed one effort to a slanting Ronald Johnson for a 16-yard touchdown in the second quarter. He had a couple passes dropped and narrowly missed Anthony McCoy for what would have been another touchdown.
“I’ll tell you what, Matt Barkley isn’t the reason we’re losing,” senior offensive lineman Jeff Byers said. “He has done everything you could expect from a freshman. That’s the wrong place to look.”
Following the game, Barkley was asked to describe his first season, which began as efficient and promising but ended as disconnected and sputtering.
“What’s a good word for it?” he asked in return. Unable to settle on just one, he offered three:
“Unbelievable. Amazing. Crazy.” Then he offered an explanation:
“It’s been a lot of, I don’t want to say like a rollercoaster, but up and down at times. It’s been a crazy year.”
Barkley helped direct victories at Ohio State and Notre Dame but was behind the wheel for home losses to Stanford and Arizona.
He threw interceptions in all but two games and topped 300 yards just once. He played healthy, hurt and healthy again. He made brilliant throws and bad decisions, sometimes on consecutive plays.
He was up, he was down. He was, in other words, a freshman.
“Our quarterback has been through everything in one year,” Coach Pete Carroll said. “The most extraordinary jump comes between your first experience and your second. He’ll make that jump, I would think.”
Barkley’s final home moments as a freshman were not pleasant. The Trojans’ next-to-last possession began with a sack, Barkley going down in the hands of Arizona’s Earl Mitchell.
“That drive didn’t start out too good,” Barkley explained later, “and it went downhill from there.”
Three consecutive incompletions returned the ball to the Wildcats, who swallowed all but the game’s last three seconds.
With a final, nearly impossible opportunity — needing 79 yards and having enough time for maybe 79 inches Barkley failed to launch a last strike, being sacked again.
“You could feel it at the end,” he said of his team’s last-gasp rising emotions. “The crowd was into it, and we were into it. But it almost was like it was too late, not enough.”
Too late, not enough. On a day — the last day — the Trojans had something significant for which to play.
That has been USC football, 2009. Uneven, mostly, right to the end, when the Trojans oddly didn’t appear to be themselves in a spot where they always are themselves.
Barkley left the locker room late Saturday afternoon, stopped to oblige two autograph seekers and then walked into the hugs of waiting family matters. He smiled.
“Matthew, you OK?” asked a fan, tapping Barkley on the shoulder. The freshman nodded yes and headed out of the Coliseum.
By the time he returns, he will have grown. Maybe the rest of the Trojans will have, too.