Bruins Bloom, Trojans Wilt

It turned out to be too much to ask, for USC to successfully mask itself as a Pacific 10 Conference leader in a place that has always disposed of impostors rather quickly.

Saturday against No. 11 Arizona at the McKale Center, USC’s joy ride ended, 101-77. Forget that the Trojans were tied for first coming in, forget that they had beaten Arizona earlier this season at the Sports Arena. USC has a ways to go before it can defeat Arizona at home.

“We’ve been playing with mirrors,” USC Coach Henry Bibby said. “But we didn’t play with mirrors tonight.”

USC was exposed in harsh fashion. The Trojans trailed at halftime, 51-36, and were put to rest in the second half. Wildcat forward Michael Dickerson finished with 23 points, and Arizona’s three-guard rotation of Mike Bibby (17 points), Miles Simon (14) and Jason Terry (17) tormented USC on both ends of the court.

The end result is USC (9-4, 14-8) sits a game behind UCLA in the Pac-10 race, half a game ahead of the Wildcats, and wonders if it can find some scorers before Wednesday’s game at Pauley Pavilion.

“We are not a talented team. People think we are, but we are not,” Bibby said. “We need one or two guys to come and play for us every night. And we didn’t get certain guys come to play tonight.”

Rodrick Rhodes was the most obvious omission against the Wildcats. He scored only seven points, took only five shots, one in the first half. In Thursday’s game at Arizona State, he didn’t take a shot.

“I know I need to come to the table,” Rhodes said. “I have to bring more.

“There is a lot of frustration on this team right now. There wasn’t anything that went right tonight.”

It was possible Rhodes’ performance against the Arizona schools was because of flu, which has limited his practice time, but Bibby dismissed such talk.

“There is not time to be sick. It’s time to suck it up,” Bibby said. “You can’t be sick, you can’t be tired. There is not time for that in a Pac-10 race.

“We’ve never told Rod not to shoot. I told him at halftime I needed him to play. We need him to go out and take control. . . . We didn’t have a leader on the floor tonight. We played street ball. “

Said Gary Williams, whose intentional foul at 12:03 in the second with the score 66-54 seemed to be USC waving the white flag: “Rod’s a big guard. He can take people off the dribble and score, and we need that. But tonight we needed a lot of people to step up.

“We all played a silly game tonight. The intentional fouls, the turnovers [a season-high 26]--everything we did tonight was silly.”

Stais Boseman seemed to be the only Trojan who could play in front of the rowdy crowd of 14,474. He led USC with 24 points, two shy of his career high, and played all but the game’s final two minutes.

He would not comment after the game. There was little to say. No one helped him during Arizona’s 18-5 run with 6:51 left in the first half, started on a follow by Bibby when USC’s Gary Johnson did a poor job boxing him out on a Dickerson miss.

And Boseman got little support after his drive four minutes into the second half cut the Arizona lead to nine, 57-48. From there, Rhodes missed two free throws and three other Trojans missed shots as the Wildcats (16-6, 8-4) built the lead to 14.

“We didn’t come to play,” said Trojan guard Elias Ayuso, who scored 11. “And when you don’t come to play you get your butts kicked.”

USC, which gave up a season high in points, also turned over any chances for a comeback, becoming the third consecutive Arizona opponent with more than 25 turnovers.

“To force teams like UCLA and USC to 54 turnovers on the weekend is amazing,” Arizona Coach Lute Olson said. “The key to today’s game was the combination of our offense [51% shooting] and our defense [15 steals].”

Arizona’s next task is at Oregon, while USC, tied for second with California, begins preparation for UCLA wondering if it can perform better in second place than it did tied for first.

“Nobody thinks we should be playing for first, but we think we should,” Williams said. “But I don’t know why we don’t come out and play like it.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Pac-10 Race

Conference

*--*

Team W L UCLA 10 3 USC 9 4 California 8 4 Arizona 8 4 Stanford 7 5 Washington 6 5 Oregon 5 7 Washington State 3 8 Arizona State 2 10 Oregon State 2 10

*--*

Overall *--*

Team W L UCLA 15 7 USC 14 8 California 17 6 Arizona 16 6 Stanford 14 6 Washington 13 7 Oregon 14 7 Washington State 11 12 Arizona State 10 14 Oregon State 6 15

*--*

SATURDAY’S RESULTS

UCLA 92, Arizona State 81

Arizona 101, USC 77

Washington St. at Washington

Oregon State at California

Oregon at Stanford

WEDNESDAY’S GAME

USC at UCLA 7:30

THURSDAY’S GAMES

Arizona at Oregon 7

Arizona State at Oregon State 7

California at Washington 7

Stanford at Washington State 7:30