Let's see: O.J. Mayo is USC's leading scorer, has brought the Trojans a great deal of publicity, and has heped his team to a 15-8 record.

Oh, yeah, going into tonight's game at the Galen Center, he also has a career record 1-0 against UCLA.

If you're a Trojans fan, none of that sounds terribly disappointing to me.

And yet there is a sense, at least in some quarters, the ballyhooed freshman has, in fact, been a disappointment. This probably says more about those doing the judging — or the standard being employed — than it does about the player in question.

If you want to judge him against the other heralded freshman in town, Kevin Love, then, yes, Mayo's a disappointment. But that's a pretty harsh standard.

Love is a rare talent — a big man with great passing skills, strong rebounding ability and a shooting range that extends well beyond that of the average center. He has the ability to fill four columns on the stat sheet — points, rebounds, assists and blocks.

Mayo is a scorer. He can pass a little, too, but his primary skill (and responsibility) is to put the ball in the hole, which means he's not going to fare well in a head-to-head comparison with Love unless he's scoring about 40 points a game (in which case he'd probably be getting ripped as a ballhog).

If you want to judge Mayo against the hype that preceded him, he's probably not going to fare tremendously well, either. He was, after all, the next LeBron James — at least in terms of the degree of fame/notoriety he earned as a high schooler — and since LeBron went right to the NBA and made his mark, there was, at least in some corners, an expectation that Mayo was going to make college basketball his own personal plaything.

Never mind he happens to be playing in the Pacific-10, not exactly the conference of cupcakes. Never mind he may not quite be in the best playing situation to display his skills — Tim Floyd isn't exactly a turn-'em-loose, up-tempo coach. USC's season was supposed to be the O.J. show, and since it hasn't been that way, he must be a disappointment, right?

Well, no. As mentioned before, he's leading his team in scoring, at 20.2 points per game, second in the conference only to Cal's Ryan Anderson (21.9 ppg). Given that Cal scores 10 points a game more than the Trojans — and that USC, at 68.8 points per game, is seventh in the conference in scoring — you can make a pretty good case that Mayo is carrying more of the scoring load for his team than anyone else in the conference.

Maybe he hasn't dazzled everyone in the process, but he must be doing something right. A quick sampling of mock NBA draft sites finds Mayo is still projected as a lottery pick.

So to call him a disappointment is probably a bit harsh — and a bit premature, too. The season isn't over yet, after all.

Let's see what the Trojans — and their heralded freshman — do the rest of the way before passing final judgment on his performance.

— David Lassen is The Star's sports columnist. Contact him at dlassen@VenturaCountyStar.com.