Next Goal Is Rare 20-Win Season

Now that the first half of the season is over, the next big goal is staring USC directly in the face.

Not the Pacific 10 championship, although the Trojans will compete with Stanford, a suddenly vulnerable looking Arizona, and the rest in what appears to be one of the more balanced conference races in the past few years.

What No. 16 USC needs to accomplish by the end of the regular season is 20 wins, something no Trojan team has done since the 1991-92 season.

A 20-win season would do much to enhance USC’s NCAA tournament hopes, especially since the Trojans have been ranked in the top 25 all season. So far, the only bad loss was to Northwestern. The other loss was to No. 24 Mississippi.

But the strength of USC’s nonconference schedule still pales in comparison with other teams that, like the Trojans, will seek one of the at-large berths if they don’t win the league or conference championship.

At 10-2, USC is halfway there. And 10 conference wins, even this Pac-10 season, is a reasonable expectation.

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Despite handling injury depleted Long Beach State, the Trojans didn’t break their arms patting themselves on the back.

“We knew we had to play hard because they’re right down the road from us and we wanted to bring our ‘A’ game,” Brian Scalabrine said. “I thought Sam [Clancy] played well, Brandon [Granville] played well; I was average. But once again we didn’t have a lot of guys that stepped it up and had good, solid games for us.

“But if we play defensive and guys have average games, we’re gonna win a lot of games.”