Better late than never . . . but sooner would’ve been better still

TEMPE, Ariz. -- Finally, banging on the front door on Thanksgiving night like an impishly late relative, they show up.

Finally, after weeks of wrong turns and wasted chances, they’ve arrived.

Remember the top-ranked, all-world, future-champion 2007 USC football team?

They’re here.

They’re a day late and a national championship short, but they’re here.

With a full moon over their heads, gifts under their arms and wonder in their eyes, the Trojans swaggered back into the college football landscape Thursday like they owned the joint.

Which, if their 44-24 victory over seventh-ranked Arizona State is any indication, they probably do.

Yes, sigh, the best team in the country finally played like the best team in the country.

“We got hungry!” tight end Fred Davis shouted afterward, standing on a Sun Devil Stadium field that was ringing with the echoes of the USC fight song.

Hungry enough to gain 508 yards while holding the Sun Devils to barely half that, including only 16 yards rushing.

“We know what we’re all about!” quarterback John David Booty shouted above the same Trojans noise.

That would be Heisman-like leadership, which Booty finally showed in throwing for four touchdowns while running for another.

“We’d like to finish the season making people wonder who the best team in the country is,” Coach Pete Carroll said later, in the quiet of a tunnel that had just been rocking with USC players singing that fight song.

That wonder has already started.

Bob Davie, the former coach and current ESPN commentator, spent the night standing behind the Trojans’ bench as they danced and howled and busted lips and bashed dreams and simply steamrollered the previously one-loss Sun Devils.

Davie had two observations.

He said, “I have never seen a team have as much fun as this team had; they were what college football is all about.”

He also said, “By the time we get to Jan. 1, nobody is going to want to play this team. They could be the best team in the country.”

Too late for that.

“It’s a long season . . . it still is,” Booty protested. “Even with one game left, a lot can happen.”

Not long enough to make up for two losses, particularly one to a Stanford team that was a 41-point underdog and has won only two other games.

Instead of following the giant cleat marks of the national title teams of 2003 and 2004, these Trojans must be content to imitate 2002.

That was the season the Carson Palmer-led Trojans lost two early games, then finished strong to dominate Iowa in the Orange Bowl, wind up 11-2 and be considered by many as the best team in the country.

The players must have been told about 2002. Even though he’s only a sophomore, safety Taylor Mays was even talking about it.

“Sometimes it’s frustrating, when you think, what if we don’t lose to Stanford, what if we don’t lose to Oregon,” said Mays in a thumping locker room. “But look at 2002. That team finished as the best. That’s what we want to do.”

With one remaining regular-season game against UCLA, followed by a bowl game probably against either Ohio State or a Big 12 loser, the goal is reachable.

After Thursday night, anything seems possible.

Or, in the case of Arizona State, impossible.

Said quarterback Rudy Carpenter: “We were just a little overmatched.”

Said safety Troy Nolan. “We were just too overwhelmed.”

Weren’t we all?

With their anticipated starting offense intact for the first time this fall, the Trojans scored like the Leinart-Bush Trojans, quickly and harshly, with touchdown drives that demoralized.

Fifty-one yards in 1:47. Fifty-four yards in 2:27. Fifty-four yards in 2:19. And so forth. And so on.

“We knew this is what we could become,” Carroll said. “It’s just taken us a while to get back to that.”

With their defense seemingly playing together for the first time this year, the Trojans stifled like the Cody-Patterson Trojans, with crushing stops on nearly every big play.

After the first quarter, they didn’t give up a drive of more than 42 yards. If not for a scoring kickoff return, a blocked punt and a bad penalty, they would have allowed but three points.

“To have the heart, the tempo, the sense of urgency all night long, that’s what I’m happy about,” Booty said.

Which raises the question of the night.

Where was all this stuff before?

No doubt there were members of Trojan Nation who greeted Thursday’s success with a scream.

What took so long?

Healed injuries surely account for some of the difference. But surely, so does a battered ego.

It was as if these Trojans, for the first time this year, took nothing for granted. With locker room chants that lasted long after the game ended, they have never acted more like big kids.

It was as if, after a couple of seasons of feeling entitled, they finally understood what the early Carroll teams understood, that none of this is easy, that all of it must be earned.

Davis earned it while breaking three tackles on a rollicking 34-yard touchdown catch that made his teammates dance with glee.

Joe McKnight earned it with a he’s-here-he’s-gone seven-yard touchdown catch that made everyone just stare.

Lawrence Jackson earned it with four sacks that left Carpenter bloody and cursing.

“They know . . . they know now . . . they know what they are capable of doing,” said a pleased Carroll.

It is a lesson these baffling USC Trojans learned far too late. But it is a lesson learned nonetheless.

Shake them by the lapels. Scold them for all the worry. Then welcome them home.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.