Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

A “great” USC team, loaded with the country’s top prep talent, praised and lauded after impressive  non-conference victories … loses to a mediocre-to-bad Pac-10 team.

Happened twice in 2006. Twice more in 2007.

And once, already, in 2008.

Oregon State 27, USC 21.

That’s 25-and-a-half-point underdog Oregon State 27, nationally top-ranked USC 21.

And we have two thoughts on this: 1) man, are the Trojans screwed, and 2) maybe it’s time to ask if Pete Carroll is a great recruiter and a great personality but not a great game coach.

Let’s start with what the Trojans just lost:

–A shot at a national title. It is so over for the Tr0jans. Unless some really, really weird things happen. Here’s why: The Pac-10 sucks, and it has the horrible non-conference results to prove it, including an 0-5 record against the Mountain West Conference. The most germane non-conference score, at the moment, is this one: Penn State 45, Oregon State 14. The same Oregon State that just beat the Trojans.

A year ago, when USC lost at home to Stanford, I wrote that as bad as things looked, the Trojans weren’t baked because if they could go 11-1 they had a shot. But that was because the Pac-10 was considered a strong conference, a year ago, and coming out of there with an 11-1 record would be something to look at. And, as it turned out, it would have been enough to put the Trojans in the title game. Except they also lost to Oregon.

This year, one Pac-10 defeat is fatal. Because the conference is so weak. What that means for the Trojans is that, even at 11-1 (which assumes a lot from the team that looked so ordinary tonight in Corvallis) they aren’t going to get to the BCS title game unless all but one of the good teams in the Big 12 and SEC (and Penn State, too) lose at least twice. Talking Oklahoma, Missouri, Texas, Colorado, probably even Kansas and Texas Tech out of the Big 12 … and literally anybody out of the SEC.

That could happen. But don’t bank on it. This one defeat is enough to bury the Trojans in any head-to-head with any other one-defeat teams.

–Mark Sanchez, Heisman Trophy? Not gonna happen. You can’t play like he did in the fourth quarter, spraying passes all over the stadium, including the fatal interception that led to the decisive touchdown, and win the statue. Maybe next year.

–Rey Maualuga, Butkus Award? Nope. Not when a 5-foot-6 running back gashes the USC defense for 186 rushing yards — almost all of it between the tackles, where Maualuga works. And he got hurt late, so any national awards for No. 58 may be moot.

USC could still win the Pac-10, go to the Rose Bowl again … but this program expects more than that.

Should it?

And now we come to Pete Carroll.

Fun guy. Magnetic personality. Charisma galore.

Best recruiter in the country. Bar none. Everybody loves the Trojans’ talent. They get practically everyone they want, especially when the competition is a Pac-10 school.  Does Oregon State have even one player USC wanted? I’m going to guess the answer is “no.” And that probably is the case for 99 percent of the players in this conference.

But then we are confronted with this:

Despite having what certainly looks like the best talent in the conference, and by a wide margin, Carroll’s USC teams keep contriving to lose Pac-10 games. That’s five defeats in their last 15 Pac-10 games. Four defeats in their last eight Pac-10 road games.

In all but one of those games — the one at Oregon, where the Ducks were ranked higher and had a healthy Dennis Dixon and the Trojans were playing without John David Booty — USC was a heavy favorite to win. For good reason. You line up USC’s guys against the other Pac-10 guys, and it ought to be no matchup. Which is validated come NFL draft time, when USC has a half-dozen guys taken before just about anyone else in the Pac-10 is named.

So where do we look to solve this disconnect between “overwhelming talent” and “not overwhelming results”?

Gotta be right at Pete Carroll.

My feeling is this: Pete Carroll is not a great Xs and Os guy … and since Norm Chow left, he hasn’t had any other great Xs and Os guys around him, either.

USC generally beats you with their raw talent. They are bigger and faster than you are. And it almost always comes to the fore when the Trojans play somebody who isn’t familiar with them.

But when the Trojans get a Pac-10 opponent, which knows what they do and how they do it, and prepares for USC as if it’s their Super Bowl … USC gets outmanuevered. Bamboozled.

Out-coached.

USC does what it does. And then a couple or three times a season finds itself reacting to its opponents’ moves. DeWayne Walker’s blitz package, in the UCLA game two years ago. Oregon State’s running game tonight. If the Trojans lose a turnover battle to almost anyone, they are in imminent danger of losing. And they did it again tonight, giving it away twice, not getting any takeaways, and losing.

Sigh.

It’s disappointing, if you like to see big games played by SoCal teams. USC hammered Virginia and Ohio State, and had nine games against clearly flawed Pac-10 teams and a still shaky Notre Dame left … and it couldn’t get past even one of those opponents.

Now we begin to think about Pete Carroll’s NFL career. His career record in four seasons (one with the Jets, three with the Patriots): 33-31 regular season, 34-33 overall.

In the NFL, where talent is parceled out almost evenly, Pete Carroll is a .500 coach.

Maybe it is that coach who keeps losing twice a year to lesser college football teams.

I’m not saying fire Pete Carroll. I’m not saying he can’t keep on winning 10, 11 games a year for years to come.

But I think we now have to consider whether this master recruiter is equally as good at coaching up those recruits and handing them over to brilliant minds who can make them even better.

This USC season is over, in terms of the Big Prize. Barring the bizarre.

Carroll’s task now is getting his guys focused enough that the Trojans can win the Pac-10, get back to the Rose Bowl, beat whomever the Big Ten sends out here, finish 12-1 or 11-2, maybe 10-3 … maybe in the top 10 or even the top five.

But not in the top two, and thus, not in the national title game. Which is what this USC program plays for.