Opportunity Awaits in Top-Rated Arizona

The carnage of Thursday night’s 30-point loss to Arizona State still smoldering in its rearview mirror, USC went for a mind-clearing, 110-mile ride south on Friday morning, then had a surprisingly spirited workout at Arizona’s McKale Center.

Surprising yet troubling, it turns out, for the consistently inconsistent Trojans.

“It was a good practice so that’s not good,” Coach Henry Bibby said, recalling his team’s run of excellent workouts that preceded a 108-78 drilling by the Sun Devils.

“I’ll say we had a bad practice today then, OK?”

It may not matter how the Trojans practiced, considering they face No. 1 Arizona today with Bibby short on ideas on how to heal his team from such a potentially psyche-damaging loss.

“I don’t think any coach knows how to do that,” he said. “It has to be up to the kids. You talk about urgency, you talk about what’s at stake, you talk about being on national TV, all those things. If you can’t get up to play where we are now, then there’s nothing I can do.

“Each individual has to dig a little deeper and figure out what he needs to do to get himself ready to play.”

To their credit, the youthful Trojans, whose three-game winning streak came to a crashing halt in Tempe, have been in every game but four. But in those four losses -- to UC Santa Barbara, Pennsylvania, Oregon State and Arizona State -- USC has been beaten by an average score of 89.8-66.5 while shooting 36.3% compared to the opposition’s 56%.

“Guys just have to come ready,” junior guard Desmon Farmer said. “That’s basically all it is. You’ve got to take every game serious. Guys are talking about [how] they want to be in the [NCAA] tournament, that’s the way it’s got to be -- everybody’s got to take it serious.”

Farmer was the lone Trojan starter to perform well against Arizona State, finishing with a game-high 29 points and six rebounds.

“This is the No. 1 team in the country,” he added. “You’re supposed to come ready to play. You’re supposed to come ready to play if it’s the last team in the conference, the last team in the rankings. It don’t matter. You’ve got to come ready to play, period.”

Said Bibby: “You either get up for playing Arizona or it scares you. One or the other.”

TODAY

at No. 1 Arizona, 10 a.m., Channel 2

Site -- McKale Center.

Radio -- KMPC (1540), KPLS (830).

Records -- USC 10-10, 5-6 in Pac 10, Arizona 19-2, 11-1.

Update -- Senior center Kostas Charissis, the lone Trojan to not play in Thursday’s blowout because he forgot his eye-contact solution and his vision was blurred, rectified the problem and could see time today.... USC last beat Arizona in Tucson in 1985 and has lost the last 17 games here by an average score of 90.1-69.6.... Bibby is impressed with the Wildcats’ depth. “I’ve never seen a team so deep that they can go to their 12th man and he can start for any other team in the country. There are so many guys to try to stop.”