OJ Mayo and the Trojans just did it to the Cardinal on CBS. (ESPN did not have a single mention of the game on its front page despite the fact that Stanford is the number 7 ranked team in all the land.) How did USC do it?

  • Controlling the clock. They held the ball and spread out their offense. USC ran it down to under 10 seconds before taking a shot almost every possession past the 10 minute mark.
  • Only giving Stanford 1 shot a possession. USC did a tremendous job rebounding. The ended with a 43-30 rebounding edge over Stanford.
  • Some other thing I might have observed if I’d been paying closer attention throughout the game.

Mayo scored 25 points to lead the Trojans.

As I mentioned, the Trojans out rebounded Stanford by 13. That’s no small accomplishment considering the Cardinal feature twin 7-footers, Brook and Robin Lopez. Two things that stand out about this:

1. They both have girls’ names.

2. Why does Stanford get all the twin giants? First Jarrod and Jason Collins and now the ladies Lopez. (Please God, don’t let me ever run into those dudes now that I wrote that.)

Anywho… Now that we’ve seen USC beat Stanford after UCLA was gifted a win against Stanford earlier this week, I think it’s safe to say that USC can beat UCLA. Of course we already knew that because they did beat UCLA once this season. What was I talking about?