Knock, knock, Bruins. You’ve got mail.
It’s not a care package from Mom, though, or a birthday check from Grandpa.
No, it’s one of those annoying musical greeting cards and when opened, it shrieks at you in a piercing mechanical voice:
“We are ‘SC!”
And the shame just washes over you.
Sunday night at the Galen Center, the elated Trojan men’s basketball team skipped around the court, high-fiving each other in celebration, unconcerned that its premature festivities would mean the shot clock would soon run out. The game ““ and the hold on this rivalry ““ was already theirs.
The Bruins could do nothing except stand with their hands on their hips, marinating in everything: the sell-out crowd of Cardinal and Gold, the stadium’s displays flashing “Fight On!” and, of course, the score.
“If they were trying to send a message, the message was sent,” guard Jerime Anderson said after the Bruins’ 63-52 defeat, the fourth straight to their crosstown rival.
There was a message being sent all right and the 10,258 mostly Trojan fans in attendance on Sunday night signed the card, too.
With classes starting the next day, USC’s student section was full to the brim ““ quite a statement coming from the school ranked last in the Pac-10 in home attendance so far this year and one with a reputation for caring more about the goings-on on the gridiron than the hardships of the hardcourt.
At halftime of the basketball game, the football team’s newest recruits were shuffled out onto center court for formal introductions, which allowed for perhaps the greatest applause of the night to that point.
It kept getting louder though, once the Trojans stormed back from an early second-half deficit to secure the lead for the rest of the game.
The current streak that USC basketball is building over UCLA, which includes a victory in the 2009 Pac-10 tournament and a 21-point thumping last year at Pauley Pavilion, is cause for worry in Westwood. Keep in mind we’re not talking about football ““ although there’s an equivalent streak there as well ““ or water polo or volleyball. This is men’s basketball.
Even with UCLA’s well-rounded athletic program ““ 106 NCAA titles and counting ““ everyone knows where the Bruin bread gets buttered. This school’s basketball team is one of the game’s legendary programs, built on the immortal reputation of the game’s best coach and the aura of one of its most famous arenas.
A year and a half into his tenure at USC, coach Kevin O’Neill now has a 3-0 record in the series and the significance of that rare accomplishment is not lost on him.
“It’s not just another game,” O’Neill said. “When you’ve beaten UCLA, you’ve beaten tradition.”
The environment at the 5-year-old arena on Figueroa Street that night was anything but traditional. The place felt like a professional arena (not an O.J. Mayo joke, I promise) and the pregame player introductions with the dimmed lights and the blasting apocalyptic soundtrack could have been the prologue to a Hollywood summer blockbuster.
After the massive HD screen in the center of the building projected the image of a UCLA logo detonated into a thousand pieces, the team’s marketing slogan appeared out of the wreckage: “Witness the Rise!”
Is that what UCLA is being forced to do? Are the Bruins now just simple bystanders in the Los Angeles basketball scene?
Like it or not, the most reliable measure for UCLA sports teams across the board is how they can compare to the kids playing in red jerseys across town. The men’s basketball team used to be exempt from this rule. Beating USC would be necessary, but not close to enough to satisfy expectations.
While every other team on this campus speaks about the rivalry in the language of bloodthirst, some UCLA men’s basketball players have occasionally shrugged off any extra importance of beating USC.
In the week leading up to Sunday’s game, UCLA sophomore forward Reeves Nelson denied any personal enmity for USC or the basketball team he would soon face.
“I think it’s more of a media thing and maybe an old-timer thing,” he said. “I just want to beat every team we play regardless.”
Sunday’s disheartening performance by the Bruins emboldened their Trojan counterparts. In fact, USC is now looking like the strongest candidate to get the Pac-10’s second NCAA Tournament bid, quite possibly a direct selection over UCLA, based on the two teams’ head-to-head competition.
This latest loss to the Trojans, which drops the Bruins to 1-2 in the Pac-10, should sting. It needs to.
The scar of this loss needs to burn all the way up until the USC basketball team returns to Westwood on Feb. 2. If it doesn’t, if UCLA can’t muster the same passion as its rival, then prepare for a long, cold offseason in the blue and gold parts of this city.
Smukler co-hosts the Daily Bruin Sports Show, which airs every Monday at 6:30 p.m. on uclaradio.com. E-mail him at esmukler@media.ucla.edu.