In the Pac-10, you can't call this an upset

The scoreboard read USC 72, UCLA 63. Now there's an outcome you didn't expect to be reading over your Sunday morning breakfast.

Yes, we are talking about basketball.

Yes, this has significance.

This is how it is going to be this season in the Pacific 10 Conference.

We might as well have Michael Buffer take the microphone before every game.

Let's get ready to rumble.

UCLA came into the game at Pauley Pavilion ranked fourth in the country, with a 16-1 record that said volumes, such as: This team is real good.

USC came in ranked nowhere, at 10-6 and with only one win in four conference games. Still, in this season's Pac-10, among those who know, that didn't say volumes about the Trojans. Their performance Saturday did that: They are real good too.

So if you are a college basketball fan living in one of those states within an hour or so of the Pacific Ocean, it is time to hitch up your belt, get your game face on, start to focus. (Maybe even practice your cliches.)

Asked if this was a statement game for his Trojans, Coach Tim Floyd said, "This is a statement game for the Pac-10 Conference."

Floyd said that any one of nine teams in the Pac-10 can win as many as two games in the NCAA tournament this year. (Floyd didn't say it, but the only dog is Oregon State.)

Ben Howland, UCLA's coach, agreed on league strength.

"Anybody can beat anybody on any night," he said. "We have five of our next seven on the road."

In the months ahead, the fans will be paying attention to the national rankings. Floyd and Howland will be doing less of that. They'll be trying to survive all their local and regional feuds.

From now until March, it will be a horn of plenty for fans, a mandatory time to follow the bouncing ball up and down the West Coast.

Stock the pantry with popcorn. Buy that big, flat-screen TV. Get the old easy chair reupholstered.

Check the family datebook for Thursday nights and Saturdays. No cocktail parties or museum trips this winter. If Uncle Fred and the kids were planning to visit from Keokuk, just say no.

Make sure you have e-mail addresses for all your East Coast friends. You know them, the ones who never watch Pac-10 basketball, who think the game was invented by some guy at Temple and think the only real quality hoops are played in places where the temperature never gets above 32 degrees in January and February.