Oklahoma Sooners' Blake Griffin, left, leaps to save the ball from going out of bounds as Purdue's E'Twan Moore, right, Nemanja Calasan (44) and Robbie Hummel look on in the second half during the championship game of the NCAA preseason NIT college basketball tournament Friday, Nov. 28, 2008 at Madison Square Garden in New York. Oklahoma won in overtime 87-82. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)

Last year, in a battle between two super freshmen, USC’s O.J. Mayo outshined OU’s Blake Griffin and the Trojans defeated the Sooners 66–55 in Los Angeles.

But in this season’s rematch in the Big 12/Pac 10 Hardwood Series — which takes place at 6 tonight at Lloyd Noble Center — there are a few differences.

For starters, this season’s contest is in Norman. Second, the Sooners are ranked No. 6 in the country, while USC has dropped from the top 25 after losses to Seton Hall and Missouri.

And Mayo is in the NBA, while Griffin is playing like a national player of the year candidate for the Sooners. Still, despite the Trojans’ 5-2 record, head coach Jeff Capel said this could be the best team OU has played this season.

“I think they may be the most talented team that we’ve played so far,” Capel said. “They’re a team that’s lost two games this year but sometimes that helps the coaches get the players’ attention. We know that they’re a team that’s going to be hungry to come in here and win.”

The Sooners are coming off their biggest win of the season, an 87–82 victory Friday over No. 10 Purdue in overtime to win the NIT Season Tip-Off.

Following the victory, Griffin said he knows the team still has room for improvement, and he hopes that can continue to progress tonight.

“We just need to be a little bit more aggressive, putting the ball inside; not passing inside but driving inside, penetrating, stuff like that,” Griffin said. “I think right now we’re too good of a team, we’ve got too good of guards to be passive.”

The Sooners were anything but passive against Purdue, as they were able to get to the free throw line 46 times to Purdue’s five.

Freshman guard Willie Warren got to the free-throw line 13 times, hitting 11 of those, and scored a career-high 22 points. Warren said that kind of aggressiveness will win OU a lot of games.

“I feel that getting to the line will help turn out the [outcome] of every game,” Warren said. “The team that gets to the line the most and makes the most free throws is usually the team that comes out on top.”

USC is led by a trio of juniors — forward Taj Gibson and guards Daniel Hackett and Dwight Lewis — who are all averaging more than 10 points per game.

Griffin, who is averaging 25.7 points and 19.2 rebounds per game, leads the Sooners in both categories.

Warren is also averaging 14.8 points per game.

Griffin said he expects the Trojans to try some different defensive techniques tonight to try and slow down OU’s offensive attack.

“We expect them to kind of throw a lot of junk defense at us, kind of do some things we haven’t seen before,” Griffin said. “They’ve got a lot of players that were ranked high coming out of high school or done well in college so it should be an interesting test for us.”

While USC is now unranked, the Sooners know that tonight’s game could be difficult. In the Trojan’s two losses this season, they gave up early leads.

Capel said that if his team doesn’t play well, the Trojans are capable of coming up with an upset.

“It’s two good teams, two talented teams and I expect it to be a good game,” Capel said. “I hope we can play really well. I hope we can shoot the ball well, I hope we can execute well, I hope we can really defend them to a very high level and if we do that then I like our chances. But we know we’re going to have to be at a very high level because we expect them to play really well.”

The Big 12/Pac 10 Hardwood Series is an annual week-long event during which almost all of the two conference’s schools play one another.

This week, there will be nine games between Big 12 and Pac 10 schools, including OU’s game tonight.