Is it better to lose by 35 points to a great team or by two to a mediocre team?
The USC Trojans have done both so far this season, but most recently, they did the latter in their game on Tuesday evening, losing to the Northwestern Wildcats 77-75.
One has to give some credit to the Wildcats and junior forward Nick Martinelli, as the team has racked up some huge wins against high-caliber opponents like No. 23 Illinois and Indiana. But looking at the bigger picture, they are 4-8 in conference play, which only spelled a trap game for the Trojans after their huge upset victory against the then-No. 7 Michigan State Spartans on Saturday.
The big issue in Evanston? The Trojans were without junior starting guard and leading scorer Desmond Claude. In his absence, the team struggled on almost every front offensively. It seemed that on every possession, no USC player wanted to initiate the offense and instead handed off to someone else, shifting the problem to another player. That continued until graduate guard Clark Slajchert decided it was his turn to show head coach Eric Musselman what he was made of.
Slajchert, a Penn transfer, has typically come off the bench for the Trojans to fill in for either Claude or redshirt freshman guard Wesley Yates III. Going into the matchup against the Wildcats, Slajchert had 29 points on the season in 101 minutes played. With Claude unavailable during this game, Slajchert played 31 minutes, tallying 24 points while shooting an absurd 9-for-11 from the field and 4-for-4 from three.
With about two and a half minutes to go, USC trailed by six before Slajchert took an inbound pass from his baseline and pulled a contested 3-pointer early in the shot clock, which slammed off the inner part of the rim before falling in. The crucial three points brought the Trojans within three points of the lead after trailing by as many as 15 in the second half.
Slajchert wasn’t the only Trojan who hit a crucial 3-pointer in the final minutes of the game, however. With only 35 seconds to go and USC down six, graduate forward Chibuzo Agbo drained a very similar right-wing three, drawing the foul and bringing him to the charity stripe for the possibility of one more — which he ended up missing.
After USC fouled and Northwestern made one of its two free throws, Slajchert took the ball down the court once more down four points before stepping two feet in front of the logo and launching and making a three while drawing contact on his release. He made his free throw, tying the game at 75 apiece with only 29 seconds remaining. However, the Wildcats wasted the remaining time on the clock before Martinelli drove to the short corner, split through a double team and tossed an easy floater off the back part of the rim to ice the game with 2.6 seconds left.
Martinelli had a fantastic game for Northwestern, finishing with a 27-point, 13-rebound double-double while playing every single second of the game.
Despite the close score, it was by no means a close game everywhere on the score sheet. The Trojans played terribly in the paint on Tuesday night, showing why not having a true big man remains a major issue, even against supposedly worse teams. A third of Northwestern’s points came from second-chance opportunities, in part due to the Wildcats’ absurd 23 offensive rebounds — nearly out-rebounding USC’s 27 total on just one side of the floor. This clear issue needs to be addressed going forward, no matter how much Musselman wants to focus on transition defense.
USC now has to contend with the No. 7 Purdue Boilermakers on Friday at 4 p.m. with another potential upset-ranked win able to keep the Trojans’ March Madness hopes alive.