Give Arbogast enough rope ...

And he'll be sure hang himself out to dry. This time, when it comes to filling in for Rory Markas on USC basketball games.

Earlier this week, USC announced officially (linked here) that while Markas recovers at home from blood clot surgery on his brain, Steve Physioc would replace him on play-by-play, starting with Saturday's home encounter with UC Irvine at Galen Center. There wasn't any way Pete Arbogast could have done that game -- he's with the USC football team at Stanford on Saturday.

But when Arbogast heard that he'd only do hoop games when it Physioc had a conflict, we heard from several sources that he went to complain directly to USC athletic director Mike Garrett.

The response from Garrett: Fine, then you'll do no basketball games.

Since that happened, a source at 710-AM said that Isaac Lowenkron, a USC grad who has done play-by-play on the AFL Avengers, has been recruited to fill in for Physioc. Even though Lowenkron is better known for his work at rival sports-station KLAC-AM (570), where he has called Pac-10 conference tournament games in the past.

On his always entertaing blog posting this morning buried in the "publisher's forum" of WeAreSc.com (linked here), Arbogast makes a passing reference to "easy come, easy go" on replacing Markas, as it "turns out someone else is gong (sic) to do" those hoop games.

Apparently, it was an easy decision for Garrett to gong Arbogast.