Southern California senior Lodrick Stewart can’t consider himself the winner of Monday’s sibling rivalry – even though his stats were much more appealing than twin brother Rodrick.

“It didn’t go how I wanted it to go,” Lodrick said. “We lost.”

Lodrick’s Trojans fell, 72-62, to Rodrick’s Kansas University basketball team Monday. But the setback hardly was Lodrick’s fault.

The USC senior dropped 23 points, drilling five three-pointers at clutch times throughout the night. When Kansas was poised to pull away in the first half with seven-point leads on two separate occasions, Lodrick rallied the Trojans by nailing a three-pointer and cutting the deficit to four.

It has been some stretch for Lodrick, who has nailed 11 three-pointers in his last two games.

“I thought he played well,” USC coach Tim Floyd said. “He made some shots. He’s a veteran who can shoot, so we expect him to come out and do that on the road.”

Lodrick put another scare into the KU faithful with just 2:17 remaining, when he hit his final trey to cut the KU lead to 67-62. But that proved to be USC’s final bucket, as Kansas scored the last five to close the casket for good.

Still, Lodrick’s effort was worthy of praise, especially considering the pain he was in after being poked in the eye with 16:56 to play. After being tended to by trainers briefly, Lodrick re-entered and hit two more threes, despite admitting he was hardly back to normal after the injury.

“My vision was very blurry,” Lodrick said. “I didn’t want to take bad shots, so I tried to get everyone else involved.”

No one, though, had quite the same touch. USC’s leading scorer, Nick Young, had just eight points on 3-of-13 shooting, though one was a thunderous dunk over KU’s Julian Wright.

Taj Gibson, the only regular big man who didn’t foul out for the Trojans, had 15 points and nine rebounds. But he also had 11 turnovers.

Gibson’s ball-security problem wasn’t isolated.

USC had 25 giveaways on the night, and KU’s 20 offensive rebounds kept the ball away from the Trojans, who trailed throughout the second half.

“We turned the ball over too much in order to beat a good team on the road,” Floyd said.

And with that, the Trojans dropped to 5-2 and had a five-game winning streak snapped. But it was a little more than that for Lodrick, who now will have to weather a life full of bragging rights from his brother.

“We fought to the end. Everybody on the team, from the first player to the 14th player, gave it all we had,” Lodrick said. “This was a win we wanted. But unfortunately we didn’t get it.”