PASADENA — Maybe the USC Football Trojans have finally figured it out.

Maybe it took all those blown leads and excruciating losses to unlock the code that leads to victory in close games.

On Saturday night, they made things unbearable for their crosstown rivals. UCLA had a 13-9 lead entering the fourth quarter in the Rose Bowl — and for fans of both schools, that combination of numbers has a history that is excruciating in itself, as we’ll explain — and then, over time that it took the Trojans to execute a successful gadget play and then complete a pass in the end zone for the first time all night, it was gone.

Jayden Maiava had all kinds of trouble connecting with his receivers for much of the evening. The Trojans got within 10 on three of their four offensive series in the first half. In it, Maiava had six shots in the end zone, but five were out of reach of his receivers and the other was knocked away. They came away with field goals instead of touchdowns every time, and the question was how much those misses would haunt them.

The answer? Not much.

The one that counted, the one that assured there would be a happy bus ride back to the USC campus, came midway through the fourth quarter. One play after receiver Makai Lemon took a lateral from Maiava and fired a 39-yard strike to Kyron Hudson to get the ball at the Bruins’ 4, Maiava scrambled, eluded UCLA’s Jalen Woods — who missed him twice — and delivered the ball within striking distance of Ja’Kobi Lane, who juggled but held on and got one foot in.

“Ja’Kobi, he’s a great player, a great athlete,” Maiava said. “He came down with an unbelievable catch.”

That was enough. That was enough. And since this was the game that assured USC of its bowl eligibility, it erased some of the stigma of all those near misses: a three-point loss in Michigan, a touchdown in Minnesota, a field goal in the overtime against Penn State at home, a one-point loss at Maryland and a five-point loss at Washington.

And yes, the Trojans won this one on the road, if you insist. The crowd of 59,473, which filled most of the seats not covered by those huge tarps at either end, seemed to be dressed largely in blue, but it turned out that the people in Cardinal were making much of the noise.

“I would have liked to score a few more times in the red zone,” coach Lincoln Riley said.

‘But we have been tested. You know, we’ve been through a lot. I (said) when we lost a few, at some point this will be our advantage because we’ve been in so many. To be honest, we don’t really know anything else.”

There are, as you may have already gathered, enough flaws in those missed opportunities to fill a film session. And before you, doubting Trojan fan, grumbles that they should have run the ball in goal-to-go territory more often, here’s Riley’s answer to that.

“We didn’t run the ball well there,” he said. “We had a couple of botched assignments, which is quite strange because we were handling the ball quite well in the open field and there were just quite general things for us that we didn’t do well. And then in the pitching game we had a chance to play a lot of one-on-ones. We didn’t make enough of it.”

For the record, USC finished with 86 rushing yards (compared to UCLA’s 111), and Woody Marks had 76 of those on 18 attempts. But in those three red zone forays in the first half, USC had three running plays for minus-3 yards.

Perhaps the Trojans have been tested in more ways than one. Last week’s preparation was hampered by a flu virus — Riley said he hesitated to call it an outbreak — which hit the team before the Nebraska game and hit it even harder during the UCLA week. (And no, we won’t call it the blue flu.)

“We practiced on Tuesday with, I think, 27 players out, and it ran through more than half the staff,” he said. “And guys fought. A lot of guys weren’t feeling well. Even here at the end of the week the preparation was therefore a bit disjointed. But we said from the very beginning: we will get this deal done here at the beginning of the week, and then there will be no more excuses. We said at the team meeting last night, “When we wake up in the morning, no one is sick, period.” “

Did it affect the head coach at all? Riley wouldn’t acknowledge it, but said, “I was able to push the button tonight, so I found a way.”