This, though, is nothing new for the Trojans, who have lost their last three season openers to Cal State Northridge, South Carolina and now Mercer.

USC forward Taj Gibson, in any case, did have a solid performance for USC in tallying 13 points and 14 rebounds, but it wasn't enough with James Florence leading the Bears with 30 points to go along with four assists, four steals and three rebounds. Mercer's frontcourt, in addition, played particularly well, as forwards Henry Calvin and Brian Pfohl both scored in double digits and grabbed 14 rebounds in total.

So now with Kentucky losing on Wednesday to Gardner-Webb in the 2K Sports College Hoops Classic, Belmont defeating Cincinnati Friday night in the Peggy Cronin Classic and USC falling today to a third Atlantic Sun school in Mercer, the unpredictable nature of college basketball continues to grow in the first six days of action.

And while some people will say its due to the ever-growing parity in the game, did USC really deserve to be ranked No. 18 in the country? The Trojans, after all, had only one starter returning in Gibson, and sophomore guard Daniel Hackett is still out after breaking his jaw due to a controversial elbow from Mayo in a pickup game last month.

With that in mind, let's not get ahead of ourselves and start proposing any grand ideas like a renewed UCLA-USC rivalry that a certain columnist started hyping a few weeks ago.

Instead, we should really be congratulating the Atlantic Sun for orchestrating the three biggest surprises in Week 1 of the 2007-08 season, and before long, we could being seeing East Tennessee State, Jacksonville or even Lipscomb doing the same thing themselves.