Granville Still Stunned by Bruin Loss

Moments after USC’s last-second loss to UCLA on Wednesday night, Trojan senior Brandon Granville sat in the visitor’s locker room at Pauley Pavilion, stared into space and muttered to no one in particular, “I don’t know how to feel.”

Two days later, the point guard was still at a loss for words.

“I don’t know how we get over this,” Granville said Friday afternoon. “I hope we don’t dwell on it and we can get past it but I don’t really know how we’re going to get over it.

“None of us have really been in this situation before, so close in three games. It’s like, with those three games [as wins], we’d be 19-3 and top 10 in the nation.”

Instead, the 25th-ranked Trojans are 16-6 overall, 8-4 in the Pacific 10 Conference and on the verge of falling out of the rankings before playing Arizona State at the Sports Arena on Thursday.

Besides falling to UCLA on Billy Knight’s last-second three-pointer, the Trojans also lost to Pepperdine on a Craig Lewis’ banked 23-footer with 2.5 seconds to play on Dec. 6 at the Forum.

Then, on Jan. 24 at the Sports Arena, California’s Brian Wethers made a turnaround three-pointer from the right corner with time running down in regulation to send the game into overtime, in which Shantay Legans sank a 25-footer at the buzzer to give the Golden Bears the victory.

“We’re just concentrating on buckling down those last minutes of the game, really concentrate on putting all your energy and focus on coming out with the victory,” Granville said. “We’ve got to execute our plays better. We’ve got to be a little more patient on offense. But I think we’ll be all right, we still have control of our destiny being one game back [in the loss column.]”

Paul Gutierrez