USC, Pac-10 bust Obama's bracket, and his chops

MINNEAPOLIS — USC guard Dwight Lewis looked up from his locker-room chair at a stadium named after a former vice president and took a shot at the current executive branch.

Like a lot shots USC attempted Friday, this one was all net.

"I guess we messed President Obama's bracket up," Lewis cracked from deep inside the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome.

Barack Obama, in his mock offering to ESPN, had USC losing in the first round of the NCAA tournament and the Pacific 10 Conference going 1-5.

Obama's numbers were officially flip-flopped after USC blew Boston College back to Beantown with its 72-55 win in the Midwest Regional.

The Pac-10 is 5-1 after two days of the tournament and USC is 1-0 and headed for a second-round Sunday showdown against Michigan State.

After two wins to close the regular season, three straight victories in the Pac-10 tournament and Friday's first-round romp, USC is now officially too hot to touch.

A Michigan State assistant coach, advance scouting USC-BC, folded his notebook at the end of the game after muttering, "I thought BC was going to win."

He was joined by millions of others, including one leader of a sovereign state.

This, of course, isn't the same USC team that muddled through much of the season and went 1-6 in February.

A presidential aide might have tipped Obama off about the emergence of USC's new defense secretary, Marcus Simmons, a long, lean, lanky guard who lately has been rattling a lot of cages.

Simmons took only one shot against Boston College -- and missed it. He finished with twice as many fouls (four) as points and played only 17 minutes.

Yet, the 6-foot-6 sophomore set the defensive, physical tone against Boston College's 6-1 star guard Tyrese Rice, who was taken out of the game from the 14:39 mark in the first half until the final, meaningless minutes.

Here's looking down at you, kid.

Rice finished with nine points, only two after he scored seven within the game's first six minutes.

Rice is Boston College's carburetor. He makes everything go. He averaged 17 points a game this season but is capable, as he did last year against North Carolina, of scoring 46.

Simmons didn't do it alone, but he did it first. Rice, at times, had Simmons talking to himself. He also suckered him into those four fouls.

"He's a great player," Simmons said of Rice. "He's got so many moves. He got me in foul trouble in the second half, he's so crafty in everything he does."