LOS ANGELES -- Perhaps Southern California just isn't that good.
What other explanation can there be?
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The Trojans entered Saturday's game as 41-point favorites over a Stanford team coming off three one-sided losses and playing its first road game of the season.
The site was the Los Angeles Coliseum, where USC had won 35 straight since losing to the Cardinal six years ago in the fourth game of the Pete Carroll era.
Oh, one more thing -- quarterback T.C. Ostrander couldn't play, meaning Tavita Pritchard would make his first career start against one of the nation's toughest defenses.
Final score: Stanford 24, USC 23. The Cardinal scored the winning points with 49 seconds remaining on Pritchard's 10-yard touchdown pass to Mark Bradford on fourth-and-goal and Derek Belch's conversion.
Four plays earlier, Stanford converted on fourth-and-20 when Pritchard hit Richard Sherman for a first down at the USC 9, just past the first-down marker.
There was fair warning things weren't quite right a week earlier, when then-No. 1 USC was holding on at the end of a 27-24 victory at Washington over a team coming off two straight losses.
After that, the Trojans fell to No. 2 in the AP Top 25, just two points behind LSU. Now, after being victimized by one of the most startling upsets in college football history, USC (4-1, 2-1 Pac-10) is ranked 10th.
"We lost. We've got to face that fact and move on," said Trojans quarterback John Booty, who passed for 364 yards but threw four interceptions including one that set up the go-ahead touchdown. "Now, we have to put it behind us."
The same might be said for USC's national championship hopes, although with all the upsets happening, it's possible there won't be one unbeaten team standing when the regular season ends, much less two.
"Our season's not over," defensive end Lawrence Jackson said. "This loss is not devastating. We still have seven games left. We are still a good team with great coaches, even though we walked out of here with a loss. We need to find character and bounce back."
That shouldn't be too difficult the next couple of weeks, with Arizona (2-4) paying a visit next Saturday and the Trojans traveling to Notre Dame (1-5) on Oct. 20. Though, after what happened Saturday night, no game is a walkover right now for USC.
