With all the issues to address from last weekend's loss, Coach Carroll and his assistants have been using a unique strategy to fix the problems.

Call it positive self-talk or just not talking about it at all, but it seems to be working.

After Monday's "Tell the Truth" day -- during which all the dirty laundry from the game was aired -- any issues that arose last Saturday were essentially not even discussed. And it's all part of the plan to get the Trojans back on track.

So instead of repeatedly telling the players, "don't fumble" or "stop getting penalties," the coaches have turned it around to positive instruction, like showing how to better protect the football or teaching better focus and attention to detail.

"You've got to coach to what you want -- not what you don't want," Coach Carroll said.

As Carroll has said several times this week, the team has to leave the past behind, or else history will continue to have an ugly effect. When a player's concentration can turn from not performing an incorrect task to focusing solely on the correct duty, it's a freeing and ultimately positive experience, one that usually results in great rewards.

For example, in the three full-speed practices this week (Tuesday through Thursday), the Trojan offense did not turn the ball over once, and the penalty problem was reduced to almost nothing. That's coming on the heels of a three-turnover, 75-penalty-yard day in Seattle last weekend, and the change happened because the coaches diverted the attention away from the negative and toward the positive.

"It's about getting the guys to do the right thing," Carroll said. "It's not going to work if it's about not do the wrong thing."