By Alex Goff Reprint and Copyright Info

January 22, 2007 – The story of the Pac-10 Tournament may well have been the University of Southern California. Champions on the gridiron USC has not been a particularly good team in DII, let alone DI.

Yet they beat Washington State and Washington, battled Cal as hard as anyone, worked hard against Arizona, and almost beat Oregon (who needed a last-minute try). Throughout the tournament they held to a simple game plan. They played very strong team defense. They communicated with each other, They battled for every ball in the breakdown, and they didn't give up.

Scrumhalf Bill Bittner, late of Jesuit in Sacramento is the leader of this team in terms of rugby knowledge. His work rate is very high and he organizes the team very well. Flyhalf Dave DelFante, who is a South African, leads well also, while Ryan Clifford is the captain and at fullback a steady defender and smart counter-attacker. They have two effective centers who are twin brothers, two more brothers who play at loose forward or hooker, and plenty of guts.

"We're trying to put ourselves in a position to compete with the top teams," said Clifford. "So this tournament is really, really important for that. We have some fast backs and some really solid forwards. Some are very young, but we're getting there."

"Playing against some of these teams you have to battle the whole time," added wing Sami Siddiqui. "We didn't give up. We knew we had to give it our all each time."

Also giving it his all is head coach Dave Lytle. A rugby player from way back, Lytle is working hard to give some legitimacy to the USC program. And it's coming. Rugby is the only club sport at USC to give out varsity letters. Lytle has established a good relationship with the football program on campus, so much so that head football coach Pete Carroll handed over a set of a set of keys to his indoor practice facility for Lytle to use whenever he liked. The facility has goalposts, so Lytle sends his kickers there.

In addition, Carroll has apparently told his football players they may play rugby and are encouraged to do so. Carroll likes his players to play more than one sport, and he understands the parallels between rugby and football.

"We haven't gotten football players to come out yet, but we expect to," said Lytle . "Then we're going to have to make sure they come back."

Perhaps the play of the tournament for USC came when they were 12-0 down to Washington State. Putting the pressure on against an increasingly tired WSU side, USC was close when center Chris Erdtsieck took a pass as the referee called out advantage. Oddly, Erdtsieck stopped running, as did everyone else. it was a brain freeze of massive proportions, and Erdtsieck , who had started it, ended it as he realized play was still going on. He took a gap and was in under the posts. A penalty try late USC had their first victory.

The next day they took a 19-7 lead against Washington with tries from Bittner, Jahner and Platt. But UW came back, so it was up to Del Fante to slot the clutch goal that gave them 7th in the Pac 10 and a 2-3 record.

Their roster v. UW.
1. Carlos Tagabuel, 2. Paul Choi, 3. Brennan Barker 4. Kyle Jahner, 5. Jordan Close, 17. Corey Stahl 18. Alejandro Sueldo 8 Adam Nowack, 9 Billy Bittner, 10 David Del Fante 11. Evan Platt, 24 John Erdtsieck 13 Chris Erdtsieck 14 Sami Siddiqui, Ryan Clifford,

7. Alex King, 25. Austin Reed, 14 Justin Rogal, 23 Vance Coisman, 19 Matthew Pieper, 21 Matias Sueldo, 22 TJ Florence

What this says, of course, is in part the fact that DI teams, especially ones that haven't given their players experience, can be beaten by DII teams. It happens fairly regularly, in fact. This tells us that DI rugby isn't, at many levels, that much far ahead of DII rugby - most DII clubs are that way because of numbers, not ability.

In addition, USC's performance showed how regular practice in better weather can help a side. The northern teams had some trouble in part because of a lack of practice time. Their play showed flashes, but they weren't together. USC, which has some exciting players, was nothing if not playing together. It was their unity of purpose which turned heads, and who knows? They may turn a few more this season.