LOS ANGELES — To cap off a calculated career, it was fitting that O.J. Mayo would try to make one last attempt to surprise everyone.

Word trickled from Heritage Hall on Wednesday evening that Mayo would enter the NBA Draft. But it wasn’t the decision that surprised everyone - it was how he revealed it.

There was no press conference, no grand announcement, no will-he-or-won’t-he moment.

Leaving his announcement to USC officials and a press release, Mayo ended his career at USC with a glorified game of telephone.

It was almost a mirror image of how he finished his career with the Trojans - nothing to complain about, but he hardly left the blaze of glory that was expected of him.

Across town at UCLA, coach Ben Howland countered reports that his star underclassmen, Kevin Love and Darren Collison, had decided to turn pro.

Back at USC, anyone claiming that Mayo would spend another year in the Galen Center would have been dismissed as a lunatic.

This was always the exit strategy from Mayo’s collegiate career. Anyone convinced otherwise was deluded by a serious case of Trojan Fever.

"This comes as no surprise," USC coach Tim Floyd said in a statement.

Mayo has been a man with a plan since as long as he’s been a public figure. And USC fans should be thankful for it. It’s that exact plan that brought Mayo to Los Angeles in the first place.

This design, however, quickly wore on the Trojan faithful, who wanted something more.

Everything about Mayo’s play was calculated; a blessing and a curse that USC fans grappled with in their need to constantly assess whether Mayo met the superhuman hype that followed him all around campus.

He did everything he was supposed to do and more, but never gave fans that spontaneous moment that left them asking, "Where did that come from?"

It was that persistent desire for something more that drove USC fans to unfairly label Mayo as overrated during a midseason stretch.

The raised expectations permeated throughout the program.

Following a Sweet 16 run, anything less was unacceptable, even if the team was without its top three scorers from the previous year. After a win against UCLA, a loss at home to the powerhouse Bruins was somehow unexpected.

Mayo was no longer playing with house money.

Through no fault of his own, there were limits to how far Mayo’s plan could take him and the rest of the Trojans. Even the country’s other transcendent freshman, Kansas State’s Michael Beasley, could only take his team one round further than Mayo.

But whereas Beasley was seen as a deity for the Wildcat program, receiving applause for his mere presence in the Sunflower State, Mayo couldn’t shake the constant questioning that surrounded him all season.

And perhaps he shouldn’t have received the fawning that Beasley experienced.

But he hardly deserved the derisive treatment that fans associated with his play.

Word of Mayo’s announcement was a reminder of how conflicted many USC fans were with his plan. Fans who felt Mayo’s freshman performance was insufficient were likely the ones who were holding out hope that he would inexplicably return.

Mayo might find a more appreciative crowd waiting for him in the NBA. Lauded for his extremely high basketball IQ, Mayo’s been said to have a game that might translate better to the professional level than the college stage.

His craftiness and thoughtfulness will certainly be more appreciated by NBA front office employees than it was by many of his observers this past year.

Given the choice between a player who thinks too much about his performance on and off the court and a player who thinks too little about those experiences, most NBA general managers would take the former.

And the ones who don’t are on the fast track to a job as a studio commentator.

Only in the infancy of a potentially burgeoning professional career, it’s unclear what Mayo will do next.

But it’s safe to say that he probably has his next step already planned.