Don't tell veteran Upper St. Clair football coach Jim Render he has another powerhouse.

He won't believe you - yet.

The Panthers (2-0) invade Art Bernardi Stadium for a 7:30 p.m. Friday kickoff against fellow unbeaten Butler with two dominant wins their belt. USC has shut out Canon McMillan and Baldwin by 43-0 and 40-0 counts thus far.

"Neither one of those teams has won a game yet," Render said. "We're not sure what we have. Nobody's patting himself on the back down here."

Upper St. Clair dominated the Golden Tornado by a 35-7 count last year, but much of that talent has graduated. In fact, the Panthers have graduated 44 players over the past two years.

"We have a lot of new faces, but that's high school football," Render said. "Everybody graduates kids.

"I'm just happy we're playing against a team that has a couple of wins. Maybe we'll find out something about ourselves."

A few of USC's seniors from last year have already gone places. Running back Sean Lee is at Penn State, an offensive tackle made the travel squad at Maine as a freshman and last year's quarterback, Josh Helmrich, is punting at Yale.

This year's team is relying on junior quarterback Pat McShane, 5-feet-10, 165 pounds, to run the offense.

"He's more of an on-the-run guy than a pocket guy," Render said. "He's not very tall, but he's a competitor."

McShane has a couple of solid backs behind him in 205-pound Ramy Nubani, who scored two touchdowns against Baldwin, and 185-pound Dane Conwell, who had 11 carries for 112 yards, including an 87-yard touchdown run last week.

McShane threw touchdown passes of 11 yards to Adam Chrissis and 30 yards to David Shine against Baldwin.

The Panthers' defense, which forced four turnovers in the Baldwin game, returned only three starters, ends Chris Gilbert and Matt Sakolan, and cornerback McShane, from the team that reached the WPIAL Class AAAA semifinals a year ago.

Rankin is in his 27th year at USC. He also has coached at Uniontown and Carrollton and is eight wins shy of his 300th career victory.

"I'm a little bit surprised at what we've been able to do so far," the coach admitted of this season. "But it doesn't mean very much yet.

"Every coach wants to play older, more experienced kids, but that stuff goes in cycles. We've had a lot of senior starters the past couple of years and now we're a little bit young."

But still good.

Senior Evan Magliocca is a veteran kicker and junior Ben Fraudin handles the punting duties for the Panthers. Both have played well.

"We muffed an extra point last week, but that won't happen very often," Rankin said. "Our kick coverages have been good, too."

While Rankin says he and his staff strategize before every game, he admitted that "we're still in the young part of our season and we're concentrating on making our team better."

Butler coach Garry Cathell previously coached two members of Upper St. Clair's coaching staff. USC quarterbacks coach Shawn Morton was Bethel Park's signal-caller when Cathell was on the staff there.

Panthers defensive coordinator John Miller played three years for Cathell at Peters Township.

"I was in his wedding," Cathell said of Miller. "I know a lot of their coaches pretty well."