In a nail-biting finish, No. 24 USC men’s basketball took down Oregon 82-77 on the road.
Despite the Trojans missing their leading scorer, junior guard Rodney Rice, for the second straight game, they are showing no signs of slowing down.
Stepping up in his absence, sophomore forward Jacob Cofie scored the first five points for USC. The Ducks didn’t shy away from the challenge, leading to a back and forth opening sequence. Five minutes in, they were tied at 10 each.
Finally breaking the flow of the game, Oregon exploded over the next four minutes, going on a 7-0 run to finally give itself some cushion.
After failing to score for the first eleven and a half minutes, USC graduate guard Chad Baker-Mazara found the bottom of the net on a pull-up jumper to pull his squad back within four.
The two teams traded threes in the ensuing seven possessions, with the Ducks hitting four, extending their lead back to seven. When the Trojans finally missed, Oregon hit a fifth straight deep-ball, giving themselves a double-digit lead.
It felt like a 3-point contest in Eugene, with the two teams hitting 13 threes combined in just the first 16 minutes.
The final four minutes of the half was all USC, clawing its way back from a 10-point deficit to tie it at 39 on the back of amazing defense. The Trojans held the Ducks to just four points during that stretch.
Cofie and Baker-Mazara had a monster first half performance, combining for 28 of USC’s 39 points.
Their momentum didn’t go anywhere, as the Trojans started the second half off with two straight buckets to garner a four point lead, their largest of the night up until then.
For the next six minutes, USC got back to its playing style, drawing fouls and getting to the free throw line with both teams combining for seven trips. This slowed the game down and gave both teams a chance to pull away, but neither team could find a run to do so.
With nine minutes left, the two teams were back to square one, all knotted up at 60.
With Cofie and Baker-Mazara struggling, a late-game explosion from senior forward Ezra Ausar kept the Trojans in the lead. The human sledgehammer scored seven points in under three minutes, using his physical frame to carve his way inside and draw contact.
Coming out of a TV timeout with exactly four minutes left in the game, the Trojans led 71-68, hoping to just hold on.
Last year, in head coach Eric Musselman’s first season with USC, it felt like they could never take home the close ones, especially in Big Ten play, ultimately leading to a 7-13 conference record.
Fortunately for the Trojans, this season has had an entirely new feel to it. After lacking a true clutch player to give the ball to in crunch time, Musselman has found one in Baker-Mazara.
Up by two with a minute to play, he knocked down a huge right wing three as the shot clock expired to put the Trojans up five, a deficit too large for the Ducks to recover from.
USC is now 8-0 for the first time since 2021, and it feels like the basketball program is truly back. The Trojans look to stay undefeated this Saturday against the Washington Huskies at Galen Center at 3 p.m.