Sometimes your best just isn’t good enough.
For the USC Trojans, that was the case in their Sunday night duel with Rutgers. Despite shooting an absurd 51.5% from the field, the Trojans still lost by double digits, 95-85 against the Knights. This was the first time the team lost when scoring at least 77 points this year.
After a slow start with only six points in the first half, junior guard Desmond Claude caught fire scoring 24 points, finishing with 30 on the night. His partner in crime in the backcourt, redshirt freshman guard Wesley Yates III scored 23 points. The rest of the team combined for the remaining 32 points in the game.
Things seemed bright for USC six minutes into the game, with a seven-point run helping them move to a five point lead and keeping Rutgers at bay. Rutgers would keep the game close, but the cardinal and gold would go on another seven point run before the Knights worked hard to tie the game, then go on an eight-point run of their own at the end of the first half to take a five-point lead into the locker room.
The two teams continued to bombard each other from outside in the second half, with USC taking seven 3-point attempts and Rutgers letting 10 fly. Both teams were hitting from outside as well, with USC shooting at 46.6% from distance and Rutgers at 45% respectively. The difference? The Scarlet Knights were shooting from everywhere with confidence, especially from far out. With strong ball movement from Rutgers, the Trojans seemed two steps away from the shot at all time and were never able to effectively get hands up despite forcing long range looks.
Rutgers slowly chipped away at USC and held a 17-point lead late in the second half before USC came alive with three minutes to go in the game. The Trojans would go on an eight-point tear, but it was far too little, far too late to keep the team from losing their fourth consecutive away game.
The game was full of positives for USC — shooting percentage among them — but the main was rebounding. The Trojans had a season-high 18 offensive rebounds and a total of 34 rebounds — tremendous for a team that is known to not have a traditional big man.
“Our offensive rebounding was the best that we have done all season,” head coach Eric Musselman said after the game. “Both of our centers had five offensive rebounds, so that is a huge step in the right direction.”
With positives, though, come negatives and the most glaring difference between the two teams is the bench points. The Scarlet Knights are no-doubt a deep roster, however there is no reason their bench should outscore the Trojans’ by 21 points. USC’s bench only managed 16 total points — eight from graduate forward Rashaun Agee, six from graduate guard Clark Slajchert and two from sophomore guard Kevin Patton Jr.
There are two ways to look at this: either the starters are eating up all the minutes, or the team only trusts certain people to initiate offense.
The first theory can be easily proven wrong. Both Slajchert and Agee tallied nearly as many minutes as graduate guard Chibuzo Agbo and graduate forward Josh Cohen. The second theory hits the bullseye and was illustrated perfectly a few games ago, when Claude was out due to injury. Only two players, Claude and Yates — possibly three if you want to be generous and add graduate forward Saint Thomas — initiate any sort of offense for USC.
With them off the court, or even just tired, the team grinds to a halt. The ball stops out in deep 3-point land with little movement around the perimeter. The offense only starts when the shot clock hits single digits, well too late to consistently find good shooting opportunities that yield points.
The fact that USC is a questionable Big Ten tournament team is absurd looking at individual talent on the roster — but the team never played together before this season, and never found a way around their problems developing the chemistry needed to succeed at this level.
USC has a must-win game against the Ohio State Buckeyes on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.