Trojans Will Keep Pressure On

Stanford skipped Wednesday’s Pacific 10 Conference tournament practice and media day at Staples Center. Cardinal Coach Mike Montgomery, who has voiced his disdain for the tournament, cited academic concerns in delaying his team’s departure.

No one would have blamed him, though, had he spent the day recruiting the university’s academic scholars to help him figure a way to beat USC’s full-court press.

The Trojans pressed and harassed Stanford into 27 turnovers the first time the teams met this season, a 90-82 USC victory at the Sports Arena.

The Trojans threw different variations of the press at the Cardinal in the rematch at Maples Pavilion and rode the mayhem to a 77-58 victory.

Is there any wonder what Stanford expects USC to throw at it today at 3:30 p.m. in a first-round game?

“Why change something if you’ve had success with it?” mused Stanford center Curtis Borchardt, who sat out the first game because of a hip injury before being limited to five shots up north.

“We need to attack their press better,” Montgomery said. “They manage to disrupt our offense. They are big and strong ... we can’t do anything about that. USC does a good job of adjusting their press.”

Even Casey Jacobsen acknowledged USC’s power of the press.

“It keeps you off balance so you can’t really do as many things as you’d like to,” he said. “They’ve done a pretty good job of neutralizing me. They also have this soft, switching zone man [defense], or whatever you want to call it, always bringing a second guy over on me.”

Jacobsen, who led Pac-10 scorers with a 23.1 average in league games, averaged 22.0 against the Trojans, though some of the points were in garbage time.

“Their frontcourt is pretty big,” Jacobsen said. “I’ve had to settle for some really deep three-pointers and while I like to take them, I don’t want a steady diet of them. But against [USC] most of my perimeter shooting has come from way outside.”

And that’s just fine with USC Coach Henry Bibby, who lists Jacobsen as his No. 1 focus, followed by Borchardt and guard Julius Barnes.

“We’re fortunate to have beaten them two times,” Bibby said. “They’re a good team, but so are we.”

In Palo Alto, Bibby started 6-foot-8, 250-pound Gregg Guenther at center to lean on the 7-foot Borchardt. Guenther might start again today.