Trojans Almost Forget to Duck

David Bluthenthal saw it coming before anyone else.

The other day, before the Trojans went to practice, Bluthenthal made a prediction.

“I think Brian [Scalabrine] is ready to break out with a couple of big games this weekend,” Bluthenthal said.

Bluthenthal is off to a good start in the prediction business.

Scalabrine, looking sharper than he has in several weeks, had 20 points for No. 25 USC in the Trojans’ 78-74 victory over the Oregon Ducks before 4,000 at the Sports Arena.

It was Scalabrine’s biggest output since he racked up 26 points against Brigham Young in Hawaii on Dec. 23.

“I wouldn’t call it a breakout game,” said Scalabrine, who made eight of 11 shots (all within two feet of the basket) and pulled down a game-high nine rebounds.

“I thought I did OK against Arizona State [13 points] and this was a continuation of that. I didn’t do any major changes, I just made some more adjustments.”

Scalabrine and Sam Clancy, who had a team-high 21 points, helped the Trojans improve to 14-4 and 4-2 in the Pacific 10 Conference. Oregon, which had won three in a row against USC, fell to 11-5, 2-4.

Also playing his best game this season was Jeff Trepagnier, who made five of eight shots--including a reverse dunk on a lob pass from Brandon Granville--and scored 12 points.

It turns out USC needed all of that and more. Playing their first home game in two weeks, the Trojans were up to their old tricks.

Despite a 35-25 halftime lead and a 68-52 advantage with 5:08 to play, USC’s defense took the rest of the game off and Oregon, led by Frederick Jones and Bryan Bracey with 21 and 20 points respectively, shot its way back into the contest.

With 1:31 to play, Jones’ three-point play pulled Oregon back within 73-70. But that was as close as Oregon got.

Bluthenthal, who had an otherwise quiet night (six points), sealed the victory with two free throws in the final four seconds. He made four free throws in the game, giving him 41 consecutive made free throws in conference play (33 last season and eight in a row this season). That ties the Pac-10 record set by Stanford’s Todd Lichti in 1989.

“I wouldn’t call this a moral victory,” Oregon Coach Ernie Kent said. “To play this tough against a top-25 team at their home, I hope our guys understand what it was about. We made at least 50 mental mistakes tonight. We weren’t tough enough, but you could see this team battle back.”

USC’s near collapse--and getting outscored, 49-43, by Oregon in the second half, the most points scored on USC in a second half this season--gave Coach Henry Bibby the appetite for another postgame chewing on the Trojan egos.

“I thought we lost our defensive intensity in the stretch,” Bibby said. “We gave up too much penetration to the basket. We didn’t sustain the energy level that we had. We broke down defensively and gave them easy baskets.

“We did have more than one player tonight. I thought Sam Clancy dominated the game. He did everything on the inside during that stretch to get us the lead. Brian and Jeff played well. But you can’t give up 49 points in the second half.”

Clancy had an added incentive to play well Thursday. His father, Sam Clancy Sr., a former NFL lineman and current assistant coach with the New Orleans Saints, was able to watch him play college basketball for the first time.

“Before I got the Saints job, this time of year I was usually in Spain,” said Sam Sr., who was a line coach with the Barcelona Dragons in the World League of American Football.

Young Clancy gave his father the kind of performance that is making him a candidate for Pac-10 player of the year. He made seven of 14 shots, took down seven rebounds and blocked five shots.

But most of his postgame conversation centered around the last four minutes of the game.

“You could see it [slipping away] on the scoreboard,” Clancy said. “We still don’t have that killer instinct yet; we still had some breakdowns and lapses. But we have to put the end of the game behind us and get ready for Oregon State.”