He’s One Big Reason USC Is Winning : College football: At 6 feet 5 and 313 pounds, sophomore defensive tackle Darrell (Pookie) Russell is on the verge of stardom.

First indications are that this is a guy with all the mobility of a refrigerator, which is roughly how he’s built.

You start with his calves. Darrell Russell’s calves are like fire hydrants. Nobody has calves like this.

They belong in the body parts hall of fame, right there with Lyndon Johnson’s ears, Jay Leno’s jaw, Jimmy Durante’s nose, Louis Armstrong’s larynx, Bob Lanier’s feet. . . .

Intrigued, USC’s string-bean sports information director, Tim Tessalone, showed up at work the other day with a tape measure and called in Russell.

Calves: 22 inches.

Thighs: 32 inches, or one inch bigger than Tessalone’s waist.

The whole package rises 6 feet 5 inches and this week weighs 313 pounds. Russell started the season at 335 pounds but like many of his teammates, can’t keep weight on.

Still, even at 313, he is mountainous. Call him Mt. Trojan.

But he is not an athlete at anchor, as Washington State learned last Saturday. A startlingly quick defensive tackle from San Diego, Russell had six unassisted tackles, five of them for losses of 24 yards. Twice he sacked quarterback Chad Davis.

USC coaches say that Russell, a sophomore, has arrived at a threshold, the line that separates a good player from the great ones.

When the season began, defensive coordinator Keith Burns said consistency was Russell’s only deficiency.

“When Darrell learns how to play at maximum ability on every play, he’ll be a great player,” he said. “Last year, for example, he was great against Notre Dame and ordinary against Stanford.”

After Saturday’s effort, Burns thinks Russell might be there.

“That game Saturday . . . that should be Darrell’s personal standard,” Burns said. “When he does that every Saturday, he’ll be not only the best I ever coached in college football but maybe the best I ever saw.”

When Russell came to USC last year from San Diego St. Augustine High, Coach John Robinson wondered if Russell could muster the required combativeness to play big-time football.

“I think he’s matured dramatically in the last year,” Robinson said.

“Darrell’s by nature a relaxed, happy kind of guy, and I wondered if he could take his mental game where it needed to be. And he has. He’s really in focus now. He possesses enormous physical gifts and he’s in the process now of turning them into skills.”

Anyone answering to that description would have been recruited exhaustively, as Russell was.

“I was paranoid about making a bad decision,” he said.

It came down to USC and Michigan, he added. Notre Dame, USC’s foe Saturday at South Bend, dropped out at the last minute, reason unknown.

“They called me just before I was to make my visit there and said there was a problem, that they were canceling my visit,” Russell said. “To this day I don’t know what the problem was.”

Russell’s high school coach, Joe Medina, put together a highlight video of Russell’s best plays, capped with a shot of him dunking a basketball.

“Athletically, he was a real specimen,” Medina said. “He was always the biggest kid in our school and he had the most athletic talent. We even played him at tight end. What a sight that was, Darrell running up the middle with the ball, running over DBs.

“His biggest problem in high school was not having opposing players who could challenge him. He’d lose focus and kind of go into cruise control.

“And he’s such a nice kid. I sometimes wondered if he had enough killer instinct for college football. I guess he does.”

Russell is a star on a defense that is USC’s best in years. The Trojans rank second nationally in scoring defense, giving up 9.5 points a game, and are third in rushing defense. Washington State netted 43 yards rushing Saturday.

So how come no one has come up with a nickname for this unit, which features Russell, Matt Keneley, Willie Lowery, Marcus Bonds and George Perry across the front; linebackers Scott Fields and Brian Haas, and defensive backs Brian Kelly, Quincy Harrison, Sammy Knight, Daylon McCutcheon and Jesse Davis?

Russell shrugs.

“That would be drawing attention to ourselves . . . like we were flashy or something, and we’re just not flashy,” he said.

“We live by one code: We stop the opponent’s offense and give our offense the ball.”

Russell has a nickname, though, “Pookie.”

“We call him Pookie because he looks like a big pookie,” said linebacker Scott Fields.

So what’s a pookie?

“I have no idea, but he looks like one,” Fields said.

One thing is certain, he’s a smaller pookie than when the season started.

“Once the season starts, we only get one training-table meal a day, and all of us have a hard time keeping weight on,” Russell said. “We really put away the food when we eat at the hotels the night before the games.”

An NCAA athletic scholarship provides for two training-table meals a day, unless you’re a Pac-10 athlete, in which case it’s one. Conference football coaches have lobbied for years against that cost-containment rule.

USC players receive a $7 daily stipend for their remaining meals.

For Russell, the only good thing about one meal a day is that clothes are a little easier to find.

“It’s a good thing for me the baggy-pants look is in, because without them I don’t know what I’d do,” he said.

“I wear a 40 or 42 waist, but I can’t buy a pair of pants according to waist size--I can’t get them on over my thighs. Without baggy pants, I’d have to wear shorts all the time.”