Time Marches On for USC

PALO ALTO —  Remember this in March.

There won’t be a snoozing, neighborhood timekeeper in March.

There won’t be a hardwood trampoline in March.

There won’t be bleachers filled with cursing rich kids--is there anything more unsettling?--in March.

If the USC basketball team is invited to the NCAA tournament, and it’s difficult to imagine otherwise, remember what happened here Thursday.

Because USC will remember.

The Trojans lost, 77-71, to unbeaten and No. 1-ranked Stanford at rocking Maples Pavilion.

But they did it with Elite Eight effort, with Sweet Sixteen stuff, with the sort of play that would lead the tournament cliche kings to call them a Cinderella, except they play more like a wicked stepsister.

They were within one point in the final two minutes, and one blatant timekeeper’s error, if corrected, would have given them a chance to take the lead in the final 1:38.

Of course, Stanford is trying to become the first team in 10 years to finish the regular season with an undefeated record.

USC is still just trying to be recognized as the best team in its own town.

Stanford is going to get the breaks at Stanford.

USC played too well to blame the game on a guy pushing a button.

USC played well enough that it shouldn’t blame the game on anybody, but rather take credit for behaving like it belongs.

“This,” said guard Brandon Granville, “is what it looks like when we come together.”

It looked like Granville knocking Stanford star Casey Jacobsen into the Stanford bench, again and again.

“I’ve got bruises and scratches all over me,” Jacobsen said.

It looked like Sam Clancy soaring through giant Jason and Jarron Collins in the middle, again and again,

“This is a very, very good USC basketball team,” Jacobsen said. “I mean, we didn’t play that poorly.”

It looked like a bunch of guys whose colors were sweat stains and gold, absorbing Stanford’s best shots, again and again.

“This is kind of what we were looking for all year,” said Henry Bibby, USC coach.

In the end, it even looked like a possible victory.

But back to that timekeeper.

There was 1:38 remaining and Stanford was leading, 68-67, when Clancy blocked a ball out of bounds.

The Cardinal had just four seconds remaining on the time clock.

There was a timeout.

“With the timeout, everybody knew there were four seconds on the clock,” Brian Scalabrine said.

“All but three people,” Bibby said with a laugh.

He was referring to the referees, who, like everyone else, simply watched as Ryan Mendez threw an in-bounds pass to Jacobsen, who then scored on a hanging, running shot at the foul line.

All without one second being taken off the shot clock.

But Jacobsen probably scored within four seconds, right?

Not according to the official statistics sheet, which shows that it took him seven seconds to get off the shot.

“It was human error,” Bibby said. “The No. 1 team in the country doesn’t need help like that.”

But that’s not the reason USC lost.

The Trojans failed on important possessions near the end of each half, and simply weren’t good enough to scale the nation’s most formidable obstacle.

But they were closer than anybody dreamed.

“I’m tired of all this proving stuff,” Scalabrine said. “I want to win.”

But playing like this, the Trojans will win. With a 15-5 overall record, they should win enough games to earn a decent tournament seeding.

In preparing for USC, once there, all of their opponents will be looking mostly at this film, talking mostly about this game.

“We have a chip on our shoulder,” Scalabrine said after his team spent two hours proving just that. “We’re not a basketball school. We have to earn the game. We know that.”

They should no longer have to earn anyone’s respect.

Just ask Jacobsen, who was still talking about their defense afterward.

Yeah, it’s that defense that, when you watch it at the Sports Arena, you can’t figure it out, either.

“They make it look like they’re playing zone, but they’re not,’ Jacobsen said. “It’s a soft man-to-man, they follow you when you come through. It’s really confusing, because you don’t know what offense to run.”

This, coming from a guy who scored 22 points and made enough big plays at the end to prove, again, that he belongs among the top five players in the nation.

“Teams get really confused against USC’s defense,” Jacobsen said. “They stand around and pass, pass, pass because they don’t know what to do. Coach [Mike Montgomery] said don’t be tentative.”

Yet it was USC that was not tentative, not intimidated, all grown up.

Was there one point late in the game when the Trojans actually thought they could win?

“Up until the last 15 seconds, there was never a point where I thought we couldn’t win,” Scalabrine said sharply.

Remember that in March.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: [email protected].