My first job in the legal biz was with an attorney named Carlos Lloreda, and, in celebration of a big win in court this week, he invited me to tonight's USC-Washington game at the Sports Arena. Both squads are young, exuberent, with little in the way of fundamental skills, but both teams played hard, right down to the end. The Huskies kept their hopes alive for a spot in the Pac-10 tournament with a 95-89 win over the Trojans, before a sparse crowd. Enuff said.

One of the nice things about any SC game is that no matter how bad the team is, you can always spend forty minutes just staring at the cheerleaders, er, I mean, Song Girls, oops, make that "Song Leaders". At USC, the same squad works the calendar year, rather than the school year, so the young ladies at the game tonight were not necessarily the same who worked the field during the last football season. A good thing, too, since this team needs some practice before they deserve to wear the turtlenecks. The dancing was inept and spiritless, especially compared with the SC dance squad (a recent innovation patterned after UCLA), which combined the esprit of Laker Girls with the "look" of participants in a "Girls Gone Wild" video.

To those who suggest that maybe their mediocre performance mirrored the inept play of the basketball team, I must remind you that some of strongest squads in Trojan history were during the Tollner and Smith Eras. If the football season isn't going to be as much of a let-down as the basketball season has been for USC fans, the Song Leaders will have to elevate their game by September.