USC was tired of losing. For the past 30 years, the Trojans have watched UCLA dominate the annual track and field dual meet.

But on Saturday, this was not the case.

In a meet which featured all of the elements of a classic rivalry, USC finally loosened the Bruins’ stranglehold over the weekend, eking out an 84-79 victory which came down to the final event. The win breaks a five-year UCLA winning streak and is the Trojans’ second dual meet victory in 30 years.

The matchup between the two storied programs included a multitude of top NCAA marks, pivotal injuries, unpredictable upsets and even controversy.

“You can’t predict this stuff,” senior hurdler Brandon Johnson said. “We knew it would be close, but never would I predict that it would end up like it did.”

Early in the day, there was some discrepancy in the long jump competition. USC jumper Juan Figueroa, a volleyball player who joined the team earlier that week, won the event with a recorded leap of 25-05.5, a mark that would make the newcomer a top 10 jumper in the nation. However, the UCLA coaches had challenged that mark on the grounds that the officials made a mistake and recorded 7.76 meters (25-5 feet) instead of 7.16 (23-4 feet), but to no avail.

“That mistake could have cost us the meet,” said jumps coach Mike Powell, who believed that the officials misread the tape. “I have seen some really bad things happen in the long jump, but that was the worst I have seen in my whole career as a coach and athlete. It’s a travesty.”

Had the mark been overturned, UCLA’s Joel Tuosto would have won the event with a mark of 23-11.5, and Figueroa would have placed second.

The Bruins dug themselves into a hole early as USC stole crucial points in the javelin when Trojan Stenn Parton came out of nowhere, throwing a 25-foot personal best to split up a Bruin sweep of that event and take first.

Later, there was another controversial ruling in the 400-meter hurdles where USC’s Kai Kelley defeated Johnson in the highly anticipated showdown. Kelley out-sprinted Johnson after the very last hurdle and almost certainly signaled a Trojan victory at that point.

“That was pretty devastating to my senior year,” Johnson said. “Coming in, there was all that talk of me really not wanting to lose. I really did not expect to lose.”

However, an official on the sidelines disqualified Kelley after he reportedly swung his trail leg around the sides of the first three hurdles instead of going over them. The turn of events led to a huge swing of points in the hurdles, while an unexpected second- and third-place finish for UCLA in the 200m by Stan Griffin and Brandon Smith kept the Bruins’ hopes alive.

With a few crucial events left, the Bruins needed every point to try and maintain their winning streak, but unfortunately, injuries played a key role in the final outcome.

In the high jump, Dominique Easterling re-injured his hamstring, effectively removing him not only from that event, but also from the triple jump. After critical sweeps in the discus and 5000m, UCLA needed a one-two finish in the triple jump in order to avoid the meet coming down to the 4x400m relay.

But without the Pac-10’s second-best performer in that event, USC’s Inman Breaux and Aven Wright easily took second and third place behind the Bruins’ Michael Johnson. Those scores put the fate of the meet in the mile-relay teams, where USC held an immense advantage.

With USC owning the conference’s top time in the mile relay, UCLA was unable to overcome the Trojans, sending the capacity crowd at Locker Stadium into a frenzy.

“’SC has been on fire lately, so they just maintained what they have been doing,” UCLA coach Art Venegas said. “We haven’t been healthy enough to put a full team out there. This is the best we could do with the injuries, and we still almost won.”

The Bruins will have two weeks to recover before seeing their crosstown rivals at the Pac-10 Championships in Palo Alto.