This Upset Feels a Little Different for Trojans

An upsetting week for USC?

Oh my goodness, yes.

Distraught one day, delirious the next.

The Trojans had a crutch if they wanted it against No. 2 Arizona Saturday night at the Sports Arena.

They had four, in fact--under the arms of leading scorer Sam Clancy and top reserve Jarvis Turner on the bench.

They didn’t use them, toppling the Wildcats, 80-72, the day after their season was given up for dead.

Second fiddle?

Fiddlesticks.

Best team in town? Clear your throat and try again.

At the moment, USC is the best team in the Pacific 10 Conference: Look at the standings.

It was a day for teams to tumble in college basketball.

No. 2 Arizona, No. 4 Auburn, No. 7 Kansas, No. 11 Indiana, No. 12 Oklahoma State, No. 21 North Carolina and No. 23 DePaul were all upset.

Two other Top 25 teams, No. 19 St. John’s and No. 20 Vanderbilt, lost to higher-ranked teams.

If the voters are paying attention, they’ll find a spot for USC.

It was a night for Trojan fans--that long-suffering lot--to rush the floor once again.

USC has pulled these kinds of Top 10 upsets before, but not like this.

Two seasons ago, they upset Arizona at the Sports Arena in the next-to-last game of a nothing season.

Last year, they beat Stanford at Maples Pavilion in February of a season that would take them to the NIT.

This is an upset of a different sort.

“This upset makes it hard for us to get another upset,� forward Brian Scalabrine said. “Because we’re going to be the favorites now.�

Scalabrine made Arizona see red Saturday--and not quite the shade the Wildcats are used to.

With a game as distinctive as his short-cropped carrot-top hair, Scalabrine is a 6-foot-9, 250-pound bruiser with a silky touch from three-point range.

No other Trojan shoots better from long range than Scalabrine’s 45.7%.

That was how he went to work on Loren Woods, Arizona’s lanky 7-1 center, almost from the start.

With Woods alternately unable or unsure about whether to guard Scalabrine beyond the arc, Scalabrine made three three-pointers in a row in the first half.

When Woods came out on him, Scalabrine drove baseline for a dunk and finished with a monster 27-point game that would make NBA scouts take notice--and there were plenty around.

David Bluthenthal, he of the 28 rebounds against Arizona State, specialized in putting his big body on Arizona’s Michael Wright on Saturday, helping hold him to three points, and scoring 26 himself.

And if it wasn’t obvious from the start that USC still believed it could win despite losing two key players, it became crystal clear less than 10 minutes into the game when point guard Brandon Granville picked up his third foul.

He stayed in the game.

“I didn’t think about taking him out at all,� Coach Henry Bibby said. “You’ve got to go with your best.�

Bold, but USC wasn’t going to win without him, and Granville played the entire 40 minutes, finishing with 12 points and 10 assists.

And he didn’t pick up his fourth foul until 2:29 remained in the game, when Jason Gardner drove the lane on him.

A Trojan team that seemed down for the count is on top of the world, with the rest of the Pac-10 chasing it.

“I think these guys play their best in the face of adversity,� Turner said. “Big Red [Scalabrine], David [Bluthenthal. David played so big.�

Now they’ll have to do it with people gunning for them.

“They were the No. 2 team in the country,� Granville said, smiling.

It was big, but in a way not the biggest.

“The UCLA game was the most passionate,� Granville said. “But we played hard tonight. Everybody did.�

Unlike the scene after most of the Trojans’ mammoth upsets, there’s plenty of season left.

� Since I’ve been here, we’ve pulled one every year,� guard Jeff Trepagnier said. “It’s starting to be a little thing now. Actually now, we’re hoping we won’t have be pulling upsets. We’re trying to be a top team.�

Bibby showed the team tape of both upsets in one of their first meetings before practice began this season.

Now they learn what it’s like from the other side.

“The beginning of the season, we all wrote down how many games we thought we could win in the Pac-10,� Granville said. “A lot of guys said 12-6. Fifteen and three, that’s what I wrote down. You have to allow for a few lapses. I feel we’re going to keep going. Ten more games.�