The bad vibe in the room didn’t bother USC

USC overcame more than a 15-point halftime deficit Saturday to win the Pacific 10 Conference tournament at Staples Center. The Trojans also had to overcome being assigned to the Clippers’ locker room.

Once both obstacles had been cleared, one USC official remarked while the Trojans celebrated, “Oh, yeah, there’s probably been a lot of trophies brought in here.”

Trivia time

Eleven Pac-10 players have been named outstanding player of the NCAA tournament, nine from UCLA. Name the other two.

Snip, snip

Some college basketball fans will stop at virtually nothing to fully appreciate March Madness. In the Cleveland area, men are scheduling a certain elective surgery in mid-March so they can take time off work and recover on a comfortable sofa while catching early-round action.

As Dr. J. Stephen Jones told the Cleveland Plain Dealer, his schedule for vasectomies fills very quickly in March.

“I’m booked up,” said Jones, chairman of regional urology at the Cleveland Clinic Glickman Urological & Kidney Institute. “My schedule for that part of the month filled up very quickly. It filled up ahead of time.”

Jones added that if men are “going to have a day off, it might as well be on a day when they would be watching basketball, as opposed to watching “Oprah.”

Familiar road

Venturing out on a limb but not too far, the Green Bay Packers say they plan to retire Brett Favre’s No. 4, but probably not this year, just to make sure.

“I don’t anticipate it this season,” team President Mark Murphy told the Associated Press. “Obviously we will do it. We’ve made that commitment. He deserves to have his number retired. I think both sides need some time.”

Murphy laughed. “Quite honestly,” he added, “from a practical standpoint, we had to cancel one retirement ceremony already. I think it’s smart to make sure he is retired, rather than go through a situation like that again.”

Here, have a cow

Chicago Cubs Manager Lou Piniella’s favorite memory of Ken Griffey Jr. when both were members of the Seattle Mariners involves a bet that Griffey lost.

“I bet him a steak dinner on something, and he lost,” Piniella said. “So he brought a whole cow into the office.”

Trivia answer

Miles Simon of Arizona in 1997 and Howard Dallmar of Stanford in 1942.

And finally

A reader calling himself “Rico” e-mailed the following to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch sports website, referring to Manny Ramirez’s reputation for not giving his all at all times: “Manny gives new meaning to ‘Dodger Dog.’ ”

--

mike.penner@latimes.com