Call It He Cheered/She Cheered

USC receiver Mike Bastianelli is a Bruin lover.

OK, so he only loves one of them: his wife, Nicol, a UCLA student.

But there won’t be any mixed emotions for Nicol on Saturday at the Rose Bowl. She’ll be pulling hard for the Trojans.

“Usually, inside you’re pulling for the school you’re from,” she said. “But I really want to see USC kick UCLA’s butt. I used to say, as long as he scored three touchdowns, UCLA could win by one point, but now I really want USC to win.”

That doesn’t mean it’s all domestic tranquillity in the Bastianelli household.

“As a matter of fact, I brought home the Daily Bruin on Friday,” Nicol said with a laugh. “Saturday morning he looked at me and said, ‘Don’t ever bring this paper in this house again.’ ”

“I was just teasing her,” Bastianelli said. “We don’t compete against each other.”

The couple met when Nicol agreed to go along with a friend who was dating Bastianelli’s roommate at the time, USC receiver Quincy Woods.

“I kind of said no at first, and then, ‘I’ll just take my books and study,’ ” Nicol said. “I got there and Mike opened the door. I turned to her and said, ‘He’s cute.’ I didn’t open a book after that.”

“We just sat and watched TV,” said Bastianelli, who was the Trojans’ third-leading receiver last season but has a diminished role in new Coach Paul Hackett’s offense, though his six catches have gone for an average of almost 21 yards.

“We weren’t really serious for six, seven, eight months,” he said. “It kind of escalated, and reached its peak Aug. 1.”

That’s the day they were married on the beach at Marina del Rey, and they’re expecting their first child in the spring, a daughter they plan to name Michayla Nicol.

“It just hit me. I knew it would,” Bastianelli said. “I heard it and said, ‘That’s it.’ ”

Bastianelli is a senior and hopes to graduate this summer. Nicol is completing her undergraduate degree at UCLA while working at a temporary agency for the entertainment industry and wants to become a tax attorney. She returned to UCLA this fall after taking a year off and commutes from the couple’s apartment near the USC campus. Though she has watched the occasional UCLA football game on TV, Saturday’s will be her first at the Rose Bowl.

Her loyalties already have gotten her in a little trouble in Westwood. She carries two football cards with her husband’s picture on them, one in her wallet and another in her backpack.

“One of them fell out, and my friend saw it and said, ‘What’s that? Oh, gosh!’ She fell out laughing.

“A lot of my friends graduated last year. The few who do know say, ‘You better be rooting for UCLA.’ But they know I’m going to be pulling for USC.”