From ESPN.com:
Freshman O.J. Mayo scored 23 points, and Southern California turned up its defense down the stretch Thursday to beat Arizona State 59-55 in the quarterfinals of the Pac-10 tournament.
Freshman Davon Jefferson and Taj Gibson each had 11 points and nine rebounds for the Trojans, who held the Sun Devils without a field goal after Derek Glasser made his only basket of the game with 9:35 remaining.
The win was the sixth in seven games for the fourth-seeded Trojans (21-10), who had already assured themselves of an NCAA tournament berth.
Do you believe in karma? If you didn't watch the game, there was a controversial play at the end of the game where Jeff Pendergraph had a great put-back dunk over Davon Jefferson which would have tied the game, but was instead called for an over-the-back foul, which also happened to be his 5th foul, and gave SC two free-throws (both were converted by Davon) that sealed the game. It was a bad call as evidenced by this picture, but there were at least 2 or 3 bad calls that went against SC prior to the dunk, so honestly, any attempt to rationalize that the game was decided by that lone call is idiotic. ASU scoring two points in the last 5 minutes of play had a LOT more to do with the loss than the bad call by the ref.
Tomorrow, we play UCLA in a semi-final match-up and it should be a fun game to watch. Having Daniel Hackett in the line-up this time around should make the game more competitive, and as any objective fan would tell you, SC has a solid chance at pulling off the upset. Vegas currently has UCLA favored by 9; I think UCLA should be favored, but 9 seems a little high. If the Bruins shoot 3's like they did yesterday we'll be in REAL trouble, but as long as SC plays more focused than they did today and Mayo continues his composed play, it should be a tight game.
