USC, UCLA Get Docked by Bay

For one half of basketball, USC was as good as the No. 1 team in the country.

And for 40 minutes, only Duke has played Stanford closer.

But the Cardinal still managed to prevail over the No. 21 Trojans on Thursday, grinding out a 77-71 victory before 7,391 at Maples Pavilion.

With the victory--the second-closest the Cardinal had after the 84-83 win over Duke--Stanford improved to 20-0, 8-0 in the Pacific 10 Conference, and continued its best start ever.

Stanford was led by Casey Jacobsen, who scored 18 of his 22 points in the second half. Jason Collins added 20.

But no one hurt USC as much as Stanford guard Mike McDonald, who scored 18 points on six three-point baskets, the biggest one coming with 29 seconds to play. It gave the Cardinal a 73-67 lead, and enough space to keep the Trojans at bay.

“Defensively they were helping so much on Casey that they left me open,” McDonald said. “I was just glad they fell.”

USC, which had a three-game winning streak ended, dropped to 15-5, 5-3, despite 17 points from Brian Scalabrine, and 15 each from Sam Clancy and David Bluthenthal.

“I’m tired of just being able to ‘stay with teams’ in games like this,” Scalabrine said. “I want some wins. We did the things we had to do, did what the coaches told us, and we were in a position where anything could happen.”

Added Bluthenthal: “We felt if we were plus or minus five points with three minutes left we’d have a good chance. But we didn’t pull it out.”

The Trojans weren’t helped by a controversial play with 1:38 left.

With a 68-67 lead, Stanford had the ball with four seconds left on the shot clock. After a timeout, Jacobsen took the inbound pass, dribbled to the lane and got a three-foot basket just as the shot clock ran out. Or did it? USC howled the shot clock never started. And when USC took the ball out, the game clock had moved to 1:31.

“That’s the advantage of playing at home,” USC Coach Henry Bibby said afterward. “Everybody knew there were four seconds, but the three officials don’t see the clock not start. Jacobsen takes the ball, dribbles five times and leans into the basket. That had to be six to seven seconds.

“It was human error, but it was too big a play to happen to them. The No. 1 team in the county doesn’t need help like that.”

The Trojans came into Thursday’s game short-handed, as reserve guard Nate Hair didn’t make the weekend trip because of “personal reasons.”

But, for a change, USC had more than one player performing well on the court. And not only in spots, the entire game.

In crafting its 34-31 halftime lead, USC did everything smartly.

The Trojans threw a variety of switching defenses (none of them zone) at Jacobsen--in fact most of the time 5-foot-9 Brandon Granville wound up on the 6-6 Stanford swingman. But the Cardinal was often unable to get the ball to Jacobsen and he had only one basket in four attempts.

“USC can confuse you on defense,” Jacobsen said. “What looked like a zone was a soft man-to-man with a lot of switching around. And Granville was very quick. It was a weird defense. It took me about a half to figure it out.”

On offense USC was calm, controlled and took few bad shots. The Trojans were hot from the three-point line, making six of seven attempts, and twice enjoyed seven-point leads, the last being 32-25 with 3:22 to play.

The Trojans shot 56% (14 of 25) in the first half, but storm clouds were on the horizon. Jason Collins was having his way against Clancy on the inside, because Clancy had two fouls, and Scalabrine sat for more than nine minutes with three fouls.

But not even after Stanford took the lead for good, 60-57, on Jacobsen’s three-pointer with 6:11 to play, could the Cardinal put USC away.

“USC has a great team,” Jacobsen said. “And it’s going to be very tough for us when we go down to Los Angeles.”

The Trojans will be waiting.

And they will bring their own timekeeper.

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College Basketball

Pacific 10 Standings

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Team W L Stanford 8 0 Arizona 6 2 California 6 2 UCLA 6 2 USC 5 3 Oregon 3 5 Oregon St. 2 6 Washington 2 6 Washington St. 1 7 Arizona St. 1 7

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ARIZONA UPSET

No. 7 Wildcats shot 35%, committed 18 turnovers in 79-67 loss to Oregon. D10

CAROLINA WINS

Haywood made two free throws with 1.2 seconds left to beat Duke, 85-83. D10