USC Comes Up Short Once Again : Trojans 0-7 in Pac-10 After 84-75 Defeat by Washington

George Raveling, USC basketball coach, sighed as he studied the final statistics of the Trojans’ 84-75 loss to Washington Thursday night.

“A number of years ago, on one of those cold winter nights in Pullman (where he spent 11 years coaching at Washington State), I was reading Mark Twain because there wasn’t anything else to do,” Raveling said. “Mark Twain wrote, ‘Do you want the stats or the facts?’ If you look at the stats, it doesn’t tell the story of this game.

“If I sent these stats to Peking, they’d think it was a helluva game, but it wasn’t.”

Maybe the announcer at Hec Edmundson Pavilion had a premonition of the quality of the game when he greeted the crowd of 3,126 with: “Welcome, dog fans!”

For much of the game, the Trojans and the Huskies threw passes to fans in the stands. USC had 20 turnovers and Washington 18.

Routine jumpers turned into airballs, and dunks caromed back to the court.

USC is 7-11 overall and 0-7 in the conference, but Raveling remains optimistic.

“Sometimes I walk out and look at the heavens and say, ‘Why me?’ ” Raveling said. “I give money to the church, I help old ladies across the street.

“If it keeps going like this, I’m going to have a spot up there because it’s been hell on earth.”

After losing 5 straight games, the Huskies (7-9, 4-4) have won 4 of their last 6 to placate the critics who were calling for the ouster of Coach Andy Russo.

“I think Washington did a nice job,” Raveling said. “It’s the first time I’ve seen them in person this season, and Andy does a real nice job. I think coaches get too much credit when they win and too much criticism when they lose. They (the Huskies) have the basic ingredients to be a nice team.”

Guard Eldridge Recasner scored 14 first-half points, and forward Mike Hayward added 13 as the Huskies took control with a 12-0 run. They led by as many as 13 points before USC trimmed their lead to 45-37 at halftime.

Recasner finished with 25 points, Hayward with 20.

“Eldridge was real determined in the first half,” Russo said. “He and Hayward came out of the blocks fast.”

Center Mark West and forward Dion Brown also played well for Washington.

West had 17 points and a team-high 8 rebounds. Brown, a sophomore forward from Crenshaw High School, had 10 points and 6 rebounds.

USC’s offense was led by guard Anthony Pendleton, who scored a team-high 23 points.

Pendleton said the Trojans are frustrated by their slump, but they haven’t given up hope.

“I think we can’t let it get to us,” Pendleton said. “We have got to continue to work hard and we’ll come out of this.”

Said reserve forward Alan Pollard, “It’s tempting for everybody to abandon ship and get into the lifeboats, but we’re not going to do that.”

Trojan Notes

The Trojans play Washington State Sunday at 1 p.m. in Pullman, Wash. The game will be shown on Channel 2. Washington plays UCLA Saturday at 3 p.m. . . . Washington junior guard Maurice Riggs was suspended indefinitely, Coach Andy Russo announced before the game. Russo said Riggs violated team rules concerning academics. Riggs was a reserve forward who had averaged 1.1 points in 14 games.