Mayo defers to teammates in upset of No. 4 UCLA

O.J. Mayo looked for teammates and took just 12 shots, six below his Pac-10 average. Lisa Blumenfeld/Getty Images

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LOS ANGELES -- When O.J. Mayo finally returned to the visitor's locker room in Pauley Pavilion, a long while after launching the game ball nearly up to the level of UCLA's 11 national-championship banners, and a shorter while after giving post-game interviews to CBS' Billy Packer as well as the Trojans radio show, he was stopped by strength coach Rudy Hackett, who leaned into Mayo's ear and reminded him of a phone call. From nearly a year ago.

On Feb. 8, 2007, the day after USC lost at Pauley last season, Mayo -- then still in high school in Huntington, W.V. -- phoned a few of the Trojans players, including Hackett's son, Daniel, and gave them a message for the coaching staff: Don't worry about it. We're going to get them there next year.

Had that tale leaked in advance of Saturday's 72-63 upset of the fourth-ranked Bruins, it would have seemed like a hollow boast from a player who would go on to take oodles of shots as a freshman but not translate his 19.9-points-per-game average into any big victories: Coming into Saturday, USC was just 1-3 in the Pac-10, and had faltered down the stretch in all of its big games, which resulted in losses to Kansas, Memphis, and Washington State.

The O.J. Mayo-Kevin Love Sports Illustrated preview-issue cover that foretold of a great L.A. rivalry, and Tim Floyd's statement that "our goal is to make USC-UCLA the Duke-North Carolina in college basketball," hadn't been working out -- because early on, the disjointed Trojans weren't holding up their end of the bargain. A more plausible scenario for Saturday's showdown would have Mayo scoring 25 and USC getting beaten by 15.

Unexpected things tend to happen in the biggest of games, though, and here's what did against UCLA: Mayo only scored 16 points, four under his average, and two less than Love, the super-frosh on the other end of the showdown. Mayo only took 12 shots, his lowest total since a non-conference game against Cal-Poly on Dec. 22 (he had been averaging 17.5 in Pac-10 games). Mayo even waited until nine and a half minutes into the game to take his first field-goal attempt. And it was a far-less-hyped Trojans rookie, 21-year-old freshman Davon Jefferson -- the same guy who had been benched for the Washington State game on Jan. 10 -- who starred, scoring 25 points and grabbing nine rebounds.

It was, for the Mayo we've come to know through offensive barrages, a rare and refreshing display of restraint. And there was little coincidence that it happened to result in a 60.9 percent team-shooting performance that rescued the Trojans' NCAA tournament hopes, and forced us to reconsider whether they should be written off in an ultra-competitive Pac-10 race.

"[Mayo] was patient today; he let the game come to him, and that's probably the reason that they won," said Love, who shot 6-of-15 from the field and had beaten Mayo in their past six meetings at AAU tournaments and high-school All-Star events. "A lot of people have been giving him a lot of grief for shooting so many shots, but today he came out and played a team game."

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