Ducks could afford to lose.

Byline: Ron Bellamy / The Register-Guard

LOS ANGELES - When the game was over, the hometown fans roared with joy and, on the floor of Staples Center, the Trojans celebrated as if, at last, they'd defeated the champions.

In point of fact, they had.

Final score: Southern California 89, Oregon 78, in the semifinals of the Pac-10 Conference men's basketball tournament here Friday evening.

"I really didn't want to lose to them three times," USC center Sam Clancy said.

Ah, but I'd bet that Clancy would trade this one, in a heartbeat, for the two that Oregon won during the regular season, and because the Ducks got those two games and won the Pac-10 title, this game became, in the big picture, less significant for them than it was for the Trojans.

The first Oregon win, 73-69 in McArthur Court on Feb. 2, moved Oregon past the Trojans into sole possession of first place in the Pac-10, as the Ducks turned into February alone at the top. It moved them back into the national rankings, to stay, at No. 13.

After a blowout win over UCLA two days earlier, it marked the Ducks as real contenders for the Pac-10 title.

The second Oregon win, 67-65, just last week at the Sports Arena, gave the Ducks at least a share of the Pac-10 title, which they won outright two days later by defeating UCLA again. It gave them the No. 1 seed in the Pac-10 tournament, which they used to their advantage by routing eighth-seeded Washington on Thursday. It helped them climb into the top 10, at No. 9, and into the national consciousness.

The Ducks needed those two wins more than they needed one Friday night, not that Oregon didn't give a tremendous effort here, not that the Ducks didn't play with passion, not that they didn't produce, with the Trojans, a marvelously entertaining basketball game, the kind of game that could symbolize the best of what the Pac-10 can offer.

Because this was exactly the kind of game the Pac-10 hoped to get when it reinstituted the tournament, a showcase game on national television between not only the two best teams in the league but perhaps the two toughest-minded teams in the league.

This one was up the floor, down the floor, a game of surges and runs, a game in which you marveled again at the passing of Oregon point guard Luke Ridnour, and the sweet shooting of forward Luke Jackson and, again, the talents of senior guard Frederick Jones, who scored 20 points in 27 minutes and was on the bench with four fouls as the game started slipping away from Oregon, the Trojans playing with tremendous aggression, and the Ducks, finally, unable to match it.

And so the Ducks lost, after six straight must-wins, and for just the eighth time this season against 23 victories. By Oregon standards, this loss was a veritable blowout - it was Oregon's first double-digit loss of the season; previously, the Ducks' widest margin of defeat had been by seven points, on the road at Arizona State. It is, frankly, an incredible statistic, and a testimony to how well Oregon has played and competed.

There was, therefore, absolutely no reason for Oregon to apologize for losing this one, or to second-guess the concept of the Pac-10 tournament, and coach Ernie Kent said the experience of playing here, in this big-city tournament setting in front of media and opposing fans (this was, for Oregon, a quasi-road game, considering all the USC support in the crowd), will only help the Ducks in the NCAA Tournament.

In fact, I'd argue that losing Friday night will actually HELP the Ducks in the NCAA Tournament, by letting them leave here a day earlier, by sparing them another difficult game in which there wasn't that much more to prove, and by letting them rest a little in preparation for Selection Sunday and for a first-round game as early as Thursday.

If there's such a thing as a good loss - and Oregon's effort Friday suggests that the Ducks believe there's no such thing - then this is that loss. Because Oregon's been through a pressure-cooker of games all season, but especially since returning to Mac Court after splitting the Washington road trip in late January.

Then, the Ducks needed to sweep at home against the L.A. schools, and they did. They lost heart-breakers on the road, in overtime and double-overtime at Stanford and Cal, and came back to must-win games against the league's bottom three teams, and won them all, and then swept the L.A. schools in Los Angeles for the title, and got the game they really needed here by defeating Washington on Thursday.

That's been a long grind for Oregon, which went into Friday winners of 9-of-11, and 19-of-23, and it had to show sometime. Jones was sick here, and Jackson took that nasty fall on Thursday and still played 39 minutes on Friday, and the absence of reserve center Brian Helquist - the Ducks are wearing his No. 40 on socks and tape around their ankles - is showing up, and Ridnour played 40 grueling minutes against the USC press.

All that, and the Trojans still had to play a great game to win.

Even without making the league tournament title game, the Ducks should be no less than a No. 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament, and maybe they're a No. 2, and in reality there's not that much difference there.

"We didn't want to lose this game, and that's why we've played so hard these last two days," Kent said. "But a high-octane team like us, the rest will do us good. The best thing for us right now is to get home, get some rest and ... get re-energized. We are a pretty good basketball team. We just need to get our legs back."

The Ducks could afford to lose this battle. They won the war in the league, and they're talented enough to go a ways in the NCAA Tournament, in which they haven't won a game since 1960. In a season in which the Ducks have rid themselves of a bunch of "haven't dones" and "haven't wons," that's the next step of this march to destiny.