“We’re not in the tournament. We’re on the outside, looking in.”
Those were the words that Musselman uttered with clear disdain following USC’s 81-62 crushing defeat to their crosstown rivals UCLA.
On February 8, the Trojans triumphed to a 77-75 win over Penn State on the road to move to 18-6, safely in the field of the tournament. Fast forward 18 days and four straight losses later, USC will now have to pull off a miraculous turnaround in its last three games to give themselves a chance to squeak into the field.
“We are a team that has been on the bubble, and we haven’t played good basketball in the last four games,” Musselman said. “Obviously the Northwestern and Oregon losses are going to hurt us.”
His analysis is spot on, as having a quadrant three (Q3) loss against Oregon on the season is holding them back severely – a group of teams that normal tournament teams simply can’t lose to.
Quadrant wins categorize the quality of a team’s victories into four quadrants based on opponent NET ranking and location, with Quadrant 1 wins (home vs. top 30, neutral vs. top 50, away vs. top 75) being the most valuable for tournament selection and seeding.
When diving deeper into the Trojans resume, there are a few glaring metrics that stand out with the first being USC’s quadrant records. They are currently 2-7 in Q1, with the two wins being on the road against Wisconsin and Minnesota. The strongest part of their case is their 7-2 record against Q2, with big wins against Indiana and Seton Hall but the home loss to Northwestern holds them back. Finally, they are 8-1 against Q3 and 4, with the lone loss being Oregon.
Another key metric is wins above bubble (WAB), which compares a team’s results to what an average bubble team would be expected to achieve against the same schedule, ignoring margin of victory and focusing purely on results to help evaluate seeding and at-large bids. USC has a +0.9 WAB, just around the cut-line for an acceptable at-large team, but a graph provided by AI Bracketology shows just how detrimental this four game slide has been to them.
To further add to why USC still finds themselves on every bracketologists “last four out,” what’s killing the Trojans are its predictive metrics. These are the efficiency of the team based on adjusted offense and defense. There are three metrics, averaged out, KenPom, Torvik and BPI. They sit 59th, 59th and 56th in each of those metrics respectively, and most tournament teams have at least one of those in the top 45.
In addition, the selection committee also subconsciously factors in recent results, and four straight losses will not fare well in their minds.
After being asked for his opinion on USC’s tournament case, Musselman responded, “We have to figure out a way to win a game, before we even worry about anything of that magnitude. We have three [regular season] opportunities left, and then we have the Big Ten tournament.”
While all seems lost for a spiraling Trojan team, they have two Q1 games remaining, one against an elite Nebraska team and one on the road against Washington, as well as a rematch in the regular season finale with UCLA.
Although highly unlikely given the current form they are on, a 3-0 end to the season would almost certainly propel the Trojans back in the picture, putting them at a 95.5% chance. A 2-1 finish would require a sizable run in the conference tournament as their odds would lie at 53.7%, and anything less would leave them needing to secure an automatic bid at under 10%.
Just as important to the Trojans results are the ones of the bubble teams around them, so let’s take a look at how they performed last night. To determine which teams are on the “bubble,” I will use ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi’s current projection.
Outside of USC, teams on the bubble have gone 4-5 in the past two days, with Missouri, SDSU, TCU and California all winning, while Auburn, Indiana, Ohio State, Santa Clara and New Mexico all lost.
While additional help from these teams losing would help, the Trojans still control their own destiny.
Although USC is the most injured team in the country by a wide margin per Evan Miya, they have to figure out a way to adapt and finish the season strong, or Musselman will miss the NCAA tournament in his first two seasons with USC, his first time doing that as a head coach in his career.