Trojans Keep Up in Pac-10

USC may be getting fat, but are the Trojans eating healthy?

Jumping to a 4-0 start in Pacific 10 Conference play is one thing. Doing it with consecutive sweeps of the Washington schools may be cause for deeper debate, however.

USC’s 94-74 blowout victory over Washington Sunday night gives the Trojans an eight-game winning streak and an overall record of 12-2 heading into Thursday’s showdown with No. 14 UCLA.

Just don’t ask Trojan Coach Henry Bibby to scrutinize his team’s early season strength of schedule.

“Washington is not a bad basketball team, and you’re not going to see a more athletic team than Washington,” Bibby said. “We played well tonight, and you have to give us credit. Who do we have to play, Duke?”

The defending national champions would most definitely give USC a better game than the one Washington offered up in front of 3,597 at the Forum. The Huskies were mere fodder on a night when the Trojans had five players score at least 15 points, led by senior small forward David Bluthenthal’s 18 points.

Senior power forward Sam Clancy, senior point guard Brandon Granville and freshman shooting guard Errick Craven each scored 17 points, and sophomore guard Desmon Farmer had 15 off the bench.

Washington sophomore forward Doug Wrenn led all scorers with 29 points.

“On any given night any one of us can go for 20 [points], and the others will play well,” said Bluthenthal, who also had five rebounds, four assists and three steals in a USC-high 36 minutes.

“We’ve won all four [conference] games pretty handily and that shows me that we’re playing a full 40 minutes and it shows consistency. We’re not playing down to our level of competition, so that shows we’re consistent with our play.”

USC’s smothering full-court defense sparked its offense in scoring a season high in points.

The Trojans forced 26 turnovers, an opponent season high, and had a season-high 21 steals while beating the Huskies for a series-high seventh consecutive time and sending them to their sixth consecutive loss.

Washington (6-8, 0-4) actually had a better shooting percentage from the field than USC, 47.2% to 45.2%, but USC outscored Washington, 32-12, in points off turnovers.

“That’s what we talk about every day--let our defense create our offense,” said Granville, who had his second consecutive double-double with 10 assists. He also tied a career high with six steals and had three rebounds in 28 minutes.

“This is giving us confidence, the new guys a lot of confidence. We’re a good team that can be as good as we want to be. We’ve got a long way to go, but it feels good to get out to a good start.”

After Washington got out to a 5-4 lead, USC clamped down and staged a clinic on defense while working its transition game to near perfection. The Trojans embarked on a 25-5 run and led by 19 points less than nine minutes into the game.

“The three guys you expect to have a huge impact for USC--Granville, Clancy and Bluthenthal--were very good, but they also had some other guys step up,” Washington Coach Bob Bender said. “That’s the thing with USC. If you try to stop those guys, the others step up. They are a very deep team.”

Clancy, who had a career-high five steals, said the Trojans won’t be walking on air heading into their game against UCLA, the only other team that has an undefeated Pac-10 record.

“We’re not the type of team that will get overconfident,” Clancy said. “We haven’t played our best basketball yet.

“We won’t get any respect until we beat someone in the top 25.”

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Five Trojans--Clancy, Gennaro Busterna, Kostas Charissis, Jerry Dupree and Anthony Saadey--reported cash was stolen out of their lockers at the Forum during Friday night’s victory over Washington State. Police took statements from the players Sunday.