Brown Notes and Pirate Previews

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Dunk City podcast. Change direction by backstripping.

Speaker 2: 0:06

Here's the final round of life and the tension for the Olympics has been the show it is on the Trojan Tundra.

Speaker 1: 0:18

USC is on to the sweet 16. All right, welcome back to the Dunk City podcast brought to you by uscbasketballcom Chris Houston, here with Mark Baxter. We are doing this on a Tuesday night. We wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving. If you're traveling, we hope you get to where you're going safe.

Speaker 1: 0:37

On Thursday Thanksgiving, number 23 USC faces the Seton Hall Pirates. Seton Hall's 4-0. In the first round game of the inaugural Rady Children's Invitational at Lion Tree Arena in San Diego, california. The game time is 2.30 PM local time. The game will air on Fox Sports 1. Last year Seton Hall went 17 and 16.

Speaker 1: 0:59

They are located in South Orange, new Jersey, for those of you who don't know. They are 4-0 right now. With wins over St Peter's, farley, dickinson, albany and Wagner, they've won pretty comfortably against teams that are generally at the level of where USC had with Cal State, bakersfield. And then, of course, if USC beats Seton Hall or loses to Seton Hall, one of those two things will happen. They will play either Iowa or Oklahoma the next day, on Friday, and so, interestingly enough, the women's team just beat Seton Hall women as well, and so 64-54 in the first round of the Bahab Mar Pink Flamingo Championship and Nassau Bahamas on Monday, so hopefully that is a harbinger for how USC will go against Seton Hall on Thursday. Of course we all saw the game against Brown. Usc got Boogie and Kobe Johnson back, did not have DJ Rodman. I don't think Kobe was near 100% and Boogie was not 100% as well. Coach Andy Enfield confirmed that after the game and he had this to say about how the injuries have hurt USC's ability to prepare for these games.

Speaker 2: 2:13

Guys' practices have been very inefficient the last two weeks since we've had all these injuries just because we have guys playing out of position. We have two non-scholarship players Walk-ons Zach Brooker, jd Plow who've been terrific for us because they play every minute of every practice right now and those guys are contributing even though they don't get into games. They contribute every day because they're like full-time players and they never come out of practice because some days we'll have eight, nine guys even with them, and so we can't even go five-on-five half the time. So it's been very hard.

Speaker 2: 2:46

As you saw last game we had guys playing out of position. Everybody had to slide down one or two slots in a lineup. Power forward Harry played shooting guard. We had three bigs at the same time. We never practiced like that, so it is very challenging when you have so many guards out. Dj was out tonight, of course. Last game we had Ronnie and Boogie and Kobe and Vince had been out for eight months. So we hope to get healthy. We hope to be able to have some continuity with our practices and just improve as a team.

Speaker 1: 3:14

So let's talk a little bit about Brown, what we saw, what it means, and then we'll go into this Thanksgiving weekend tournament. Mark, good to see you, how are you?

Speaker 3: 3:25

doing I'm doing very well. Looking forward to a very underrated semi-holiday the night before Thanksgiving. That's kind of big in my house. I don't know if it is in yours.

Speaker 1: 3:34

It's oh yeah, I mean pretty much everything starts shutting down, yep, you know, on Wednesday, wednesday around noon.

Speaker 3: 3:41

Yeah, it's good times. Not as good times for me at least, I think was the brown game. That was not an easy watch. I wasn't expecting that. You probably feel the same way.

Speaker 1: 3:54

Yeah, I think what we're seeing is the result of just two weeks of not really having everybody at full strength. I don't think you can really practice properly if you don't have everybody in your roster healthy. And for a couple of weeks USC hasn't had probably about three or four key players in their rotation healthy, and so they've kind of had to make do in practice, and I think it's showed up in the games.

Speaker 3: 4:19

Yeah, maybe I take the blame on this one, because going into the season I said maybe we've already had our hit of the injury bug. And boy, if I didn't jinx that huh.

Speaker 1: 4:29

Yeah, I mean not only this year. We've got another heart attack and then we've added a sprinkled a few just normal injuries on top of it. But I think that I think if we can get these injuries out of the way early and one of the things is interesting is that there's already people who are panicking over this, over how USC is planning against Brown, and I think one of the things that is pretty normal for an Andy Enfield team is that while there might be a few hiccups along the way, eventually the team finds its footing at some point in the season. And I think, even if there's been some weird struggles against Brown and the loss to UCI, of course, because mainly because of the guys out due to injury I still think that we are ahead of schedule. Like you said after the first game against Kansas State, I think the game against Kansas State is more indicative of where this USC basketball team is when truly healthy, than what we saw against Brown and UCI.

Speaker 3: 5:28

Yeah, One thing, just to get into it a little bit, and it goes to your point about the struggles versus some lesser teams at this part of the season. I think that's the other side of the coin of the very consistent player development that we see under Enfield. You know, I think back to him carving out minutes for Kobe in. You know, in once we got to I think it was like late January of his freshman year he seems to be very patient, unless you miss a defensive rotation, with, you know, carving out time for the young guys and really just kind of taking some struggles as that goes along. I bring that up because I saw, it seemed to me I saw a little bit more than I expected in terms of giving the ball to the big men, and not really with something kind of created for them to finish, but more of a hey, here you go, we'll throw this in the pivot and you develop a post game real time against somebody that's you know, that's not a teammate. Does that kind of line up with what you saw?

Speaker 1: 6:29

Yeah, I think so and I think that it's weird. I mean it's kind of a unique situation, right? Because when we're looking at the bigs, for example, the bigs having an issue against Brown and people forget that, like, let's look at the three main bigs that play I mean, obviously, harrison Hornery started against Brown. He didn't shoot a whole lot but he got a lot of rebounds. But the other three bigs, josh Morgan, vincent Iwachuku and Arrington Page Arrington Page is playing in his fourth game in college, okay. Vincent Iwachuku was playing in his first game and, you know, his second game in eight months. Okay, and Josh Morgan picked up three fouls in the first half.

Speaker 1: 7:15

Yeah, right so our two fouls relatively quickly. So what really happened in that Brown game was was was just a combination of some weird things that don't normally happen, which is one guy coming back after not playing and then the other guy after not playing, one guy having never played and one guy being in foul trouble, and this kind of created, I think, a rather tentative situation down low. And then one of the dynamics that we're going to have to start keeping an eye on is the fact that Isaiah Collier and and Boogie Ellis and, to some extent, kobe Johnson, are so ball dominant and so dominant in a general sense with the team that I wonder if the bigs at some point are just kind of like you know not, they're going to be less assertive as a result, like they're just going to be like we're going to be reactive to what they do and we're going to, you know, and so I wonder if they're still trying to find how best to play with everybody. I mean, everyone's trying to find the best way to play with each other. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1: 8:14

So I think that, like some of these guys, like I'm watching Isaiah Collier like who wouldn't when he's doing these reverse layups with the left hand on the high off the backboard. Who's not standing around? What's going to do next? Who's not thinking, I wonder what he's going to do next? And so I think some of our bigs are maybe guilty of standing around and watching the guards just you know dominate the game, hitting these threes, and maybe they're a little kind of sitting back on their heels a bit.

Speaker 3: 8:42

Yeah, and you kind of have reminded me of a really kind of the other side of this argument and I appreciate you kind of shaking this loose. We had seen some troubles with you know Irvine really packing it in on defense and you know Isaiah kind of struggling and to find you don't have those wide open passing lanes that you would have hoped for otherwise. And maybe this is the way to get to the balls of the big and, to your point, keep them engaged. It's just ahead of time saying, okay, we're not going to force the stuff in tight quarters with a bunch of bodies between you know, between Isaiah and the big. We'll just feed it in where they have room to operate.

Speaker 3: 9:15

And I'm good with the development of the players and going through these kind of challenges, because there's only so much you can do in practice unless you're I mean, let's just face it you know, no team today is going to have a roster that's deep enough to you know to develop sufficiently in practice where you can just go dominate, you know, as a big man in a game. You got to go through this. So you know, thank you for kind of the nudge here and I kind of get it now, I guess it doesn't make sense.

Speaker 1: 9:42

Well, I think the scattering report on USC now is they're going to try to pack the inside right, because the catalyst for USC is really Isaiah Collier driving down the lane, driving inside, dishing off or scoring. So what I think what teams are going to start doing is packing the interior right. You see, irvine saw that they packed the interior especially because there was no boogie where there was no Kobe. So packing the interior was especially effective for them, especially when USC's bigs were were relatively between Vince and Paige, relatively new to what's going on. So I think that teams going forward are going to look at it and say, okay, if we pack the middle, we take away, we take, we try to take away whatever inside game they have and take away or at least slow down or make it difficult for Collier to drive the lane and get to the hole right and then. And so if you make that difficult, then you're just basically hoping that boogie, you know, make boogie beat, you make Kobe beat, you make Hornary beat you from outside or in the mid range, right. So it's like if you're a team going up against this USC offense, I think that's the way that teams are going to play USC from now on, they're going to pack the middle and what it's going to look like. And also when you, when you consider that they're looking at our bigs and saying, okay, arrington Paige is a freshman, vince, and Iwachuku hasn't played in eight months, he's just getting his feet wet. These are two guys that USC obviously wants to try to feed, and so when they get the ball, these are guys who are, who are probably going to be susceptible to steals, turnovers, double teams, all that stuff, right. So so they're going to try to take that away. But even being positioned so that if USC does attempt to go down there, they're in position to agitate, right, and so so they're trying to keep everything on the perimeter as much as possible.

Speaker 1: 11:44

Now, I would say that in most cases, that's going to be a bad situation for teams. But I think, if you know, it's the same mentality you have when you, when you try to zone out offenses. Like you, you want teams to try to break. You try to break your zone by shooting you from outside. So I think this is the tactic that teams are going to take.

Speaker 1: 12:05

You can't, you can't play aggressive man to man on the perimeter against Isaiah Collier. He's going to muscle by you right, you can't play, do that and and also be aggressive against Boogie, boogie, ellis. So they're going to slack off. Dare them to shoot to some extent. There's going to be lots of great shots for Boogie and you notice how many great shots have been available for Boogie and for for Isaiah and even Kobe in these last couple of games. Lots of nice, clean looking shots, the kind of shots we didn't get last year. That's because teams are slagging off and and playing for the rebound and just and just making sure that Isaiah can't break the team down and they're covering the bigs, and I think that is the strategy for USC, usc's opponents going forward.

Speaker 3: 12:52

Yeah, and as you said that I was kind of going through, you know, aside from the obvious, about you know particularly Boogie hitting outside shots, that just seems to me like of the three non dominant outside shooters Isaiah, hornery and Rodman you'd really want one of those to really just make them suffer. And that maybe that includes, you know, using Hornrae more on a perimeter role than an inside role on offense. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 13:20

Um, and I'm looking at um, at, at, versus Brown eyes it was. I only took one outside jump or he hit it and Hornrae was over two. Um, maybe that just explains. Now. The other guys went went 12 for well, as a team went 12 or 24. So the other ones were was at 11 for for 21,. Which is really solid. But that's almost got to be expected If you're going to give boogie.

Speaker 1: 13:42

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 13:42

Boogie and college is not a knockdown shooter, but clearly if he has that much space, he's going to make the easy ones, as he showed.

Speaker 1: 13:49

Yeah, and I think that if you look at it, I think that if, if USC, usc doesn't want to be this, this sort of like Duke style four guard outside in three point shooting, you know, bombing team, right, they don't really want to be. Usc wants to to to go into their bigs, usc wants to use their bigs, they want to be able to dish off, do pick and roll, high, low and all that stuff. That's in USC's dream world, that's what they like, they like to include their bigs, they like to their bigs to, you know, to come out and and and uh, their fours to stretch out and hit threes and stuff like that. That's the ideal and the infield offense. So opposing teams know that and so they're like okay, we know that, you does. You opposing teams are, are opposing.

Speaker 1: 14:33

The question does USC have the discipline, the self discipline, to be a true three point shooting team, a true perimeter team? Right, because USC has the players to be a three point shooting kind of outside in team. But USC also wants to to get the ball down. No, it's kind of like a football team that is a passing team, but but you know, wants to keep, run, to keep, you want, wants to have a running game as well. Right, and and, and. If you know you don't. But what if the defense, you know, doesn't really care if you run, or, but you still want to run, do you still run? You know what I mean. So it's like.

Speaker 1: 15:14

So it's like the, the. I think that it's. It's a battle of wills here. And if USC wants to be a gunning three point, just bomb you out. I'm not going to say like Loyola Marymount style in the old days, because that was all early clock stuff. But I mean, if USC is just going to be like hey, screw that, we're going to, we're going to bomb you and we don't even have to get, we don't even have to pound the ball in the vents. Or to Joshua on the on the blocks, because you're, you guys are packing it down low, you guys are giving us shots, we're going to just take them. So the question is exactly so. The question is is USC going to take these shots? Is USC, usc, we, we, if, if, if opposing teams continue to play USC in this way, we should see if USC is playing this correctly, a resulting increase in the number of three point attempts, yeah.

Speaker 3: 16:06

Which is interesting to your point, because that's not ideally what you want to do.

Speaker 1: 16:11

Um, but that's but if that's your strength, that's what they're giving you, then you got to take it Exactly and it's interesting.

Speaker 3: 16:18

I mean, that's the balance that you want to have. That really makes you a next level team too. Um, you don't see the elite teams that are you know couldn't only do one through your thing or another. For the most part you know, at least you know typically the guards, the guards, the guards, the. You know, at least you know typically the guards. As I say, we're, we'll determine how far you go in March, but you know you don't see guards with, just you know, no presence inside. I mean, that's just a limiting factor.

Speaker 1: 16:42

But it's like, but it's like, um, you know, it's like, it's a, it's a, it's a lever, that, that, that sway, or you know that moves as as the weight goes on one side, so like. So what'll happen is if USC starts being this three point bombing teams, three point bombing team, then then subsequent, subsequent opponents are going to have to abandon that packet in style right. Then they're going to be like this this is, this is not good so. So it's funny in order for USC to play the style of game that USC wants to play, usc has to play a style of play that it doesn't want to play.

Speaker 3: 17:14

Exactly.

Speaker 1: 17:15

It has to. It has to, almost like shoot teams out of the gym so that they'll quit packing it down low, so that USC can go back to Isaiah Collier, you know, driving to the hole, dishing it up to Josh Morgan, or to Aaron Page, art of Insanity with Chukwu, all that stuff that they can't do as well now because teams are packing it in.

Speaker 3: 17:31

Yeah, and I totally understand that it's. What scares me is I don't like to be jumper, I don't want to call it jumper reliant, but if you just have one of those days, um, it gets very concerning.

Speaker 1: 17:43

It does, yeah, and so but but most, but, if you're a good, if you have good shooters, if you got Boogie Alice, who's who's a pretty, I'd say a pretty reliable uh, most, most games, he's going to shoot between 35 and 45% from three. He's going to. You know, if you look at the uh, if you look at the uh, the, the chart, if you graph it out, it's, you know, it's like a total, it's probably a classic um, it's probably a classic uh.

Speaker 1: 18:10

You know a bell curve right and you're going to see, you're going to see like this big chunk of in the middle where he's shooting between 33 and 38. And then you've got the, you know the, the ends on the side, the outliers, where he's like shooting over 40 or 50%. And then we're those games where you know where he's one for nine. So, um, but I think, if you know, if you have that combination of players, you know he's a quality shooter.

Speaker 1: 18:34

Isaiah Collier, I don't you know, we've seen a large sample of him in high school and his, you know his shooting. He seemed to struggle in high school but he's, he's so far he's coming out and shooting pretty well. He's shooting over 40% from three point range. So, um, and then you've got a Kobe Johnson is also is also a, you know, in the in the area of high 30s, 40% career. And then you've got potentially Isaiah Sellers, harrison, hornery and and and DJ Robin.

Speaker 1: 19:02

So you've got actually six guys Collier, boogie, kobe five guys Hornery and Rodman who are guys who have like, legitimately, uh, you know, either now or at some point in their career, have shown the ability to, to shoot threes at a, at a, at a good rate. So in theory, all those guys could, just, could just rotate and and come in and waves, and then it doesn't even count when you get Ronnie James as well it was, it was a, you know, it was a really good spot up shooter you bring those guys in and and you're just, you know, gunning, gunning the other team until they, until things start opening up, and then you and then you run the offense you really want to run.

Speaker 3: 19:46

Yeah, I understand that. Again, I just get a little concerned when that's what you got to do. But you know what? Hey, every, every team is can be defended some way, and you just got to take a chance. This is just a question of how much of a chance you're taking, because think about it.

Speaker 1: 19:59

You know who's. Is there any defender out there who's who's like I'm going to go challenge Isaiah Collier just one on one, right, like you know, he's, arguably he might be the first pick in the draft. Yeah, and I'm not saying there's no players who exist out there, who is, who are going to give him trouble. There's no doubt about it. I mean, the guy for Arizona last year probably would have given him trouble, the great defender they had, I think I can't remember his name, but, uh, this is a it's.

Speaker 1: 20:29

Usc has a clear advantage in that right. So they have, there's a distinct advantage at the point guard position and and people really can't guard, it's really hard to guard Boogie Ellis one on one. There's probably a handful of players in the country who can guard Boogie Ellis one on one effectively, right. So when you get into that situation where it's like you know what is if you can't guard these guys one on one, then you know you, you got to try to do other things. You got to, like, play better team defense, you got to pack it in play zone, all that stuff. So USC is going to see a lot of this, a lot of these types of um, uh, these types of defenses, like they saw against UCI, like the saw against Brown, and this is a matter of of of feeling confident In their talents and and and challenging those defenses.

Speaker 3: 21:18

Yep Agree.

Speaker 1: 21:21

So, uh, let's talk about the, uh, some of the analytics we saw in the game against Brown. Um, who, who were the top players for USC and who were the top players for Brown? And then, who were the players who struggled and for USC and who struggled for Brown?

Speaker 3: 21:36

Yeah Well, I'll, I'll just start with what was kind of seemed like the headline, which was Kino Lilly. Um, you know, during the broadcast, the, the, the, the broadcast, it seemed like, uh, the narrative on the broadcast seemed to be that he was, you know, the single-handed assassin, and he was it was.

Speaker 1: 21:52

It was frustrating. He'd seen him.

Speaker 4: 21:54

Cause of that cool name, the cool name you know, lilly's gotta be cool.

Speaker 1: 21:58

They also had hold on. They had Kino, Lilly, Kimo, Ferrari, Caliwania and Nana a wuzu anane.

Speaker 3: 22:06

Yeah, Um great name.

Speaker 3: 22:08

Yeah, um, I don't think that's a lineup we would have seen in the fifties at Brown. I'll just I'll just say that, um, yeah, so Lily Lily was the headline grabber. He did have 24 points, but he wasn't, you know, for for that many points. He wasn't particularly efficient. His BPO 100 was a 46.4, which is there's some context here. Um, you know, for for that many opportunities, that's not great, especially for somebody who you know seems to be their their best player. Uh, you'd hope that somebody would be more efficient. Um, you know, for example, booggan, the season, as I posted in the uh in the article today, uh, his, his season um BPO is over 56. Um, so that that's low, but on the other hand, that was better than um, than what Lilly had coming into the game. So it's a little bit of frustration in that he, you know, was able to be, you know, above what he had had before um, really against opponents, like you said, that were a baker's basically, all, basically all the Bakersfield level Um, so I'd call that kind of a grudging draw.

Speaker 3: 23:14

Um, what really stood out to me is is the trio of uh Kaluanya, Nana, ouso, anane and then Felix Kloman. These three just went absolutely nuts. Um, combined, it's two bigs in a guard. Their BPO was a 70.2, which is just unreal. Um, and combined they had, they had. Let me see here over there the Kamai Buskar of 10, which, um, you know, is just short of what, what Boogie and and Isaiah had combined? Yeah, 10.2 versus 10.3. Um, you know respect to them for playing hard, but I don't don't look at any of those folks and say, man, we could use those. And you know, one of those guys has our first guy off the bench. I mean it. Just it was frustrating.

Speaker 1: 24:04

Some of those guys weren't. Some of those guys weren't bad, though. I mean, like you know, like some of those guys they were, they were moving around pretty, pretty well athletically.

Speaker 3: 24:13

Agree, um, but they aren't brown.

Speaker 1: 24:17

Well, I guess what I'm saying is, like you know, for basketball, for basketball, athleticism, the those kind of talents are are more widespread, right, some of the things you can do, especially now, a lot of guys can, can jump out of the gym, right, and a lot of guys are. You know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of length out there that, and a lot of guys who can, who can build up in the weight room, and so I'm not saying that, that these are high level athletes. I'm just saying that the gap is getting, is getting narrower and narrower as you go further and further down, um, you know, in division one.

Speaker 3: 24:57

It's true, and I think there's. It would be interesting to dig in it At some point and just see, when these Ivy leagues come out to the West coast, um, how they do against expectations. Yeah, I think they weirdly get up for these kinds of games, um, for whatever reason, I you know, when they're playing bigger name, bigger basketball names, um, I think there's probably something to that as well. Um, you know, back to this, the trio as I call them. You know, the one thing that really sticks out to me too, you know, underlying those, those really nice metrics, is combine those, those, uh, three or nine for 10 from two point range. Um, that's, yeah, that's. That's frightening, and I think you know one of my frustrations. I don't know if you felt the same way. It seemed like, from about, hmm, the last 10 minutes, last maybe eight minutes of the first half, through maybe the first 12 or 15 of the second half, there seemed to be just stretches of defensive lethargy. Well, we just weren't engaged.

Speaker 1: 25:57

Yes, absolutely there was. There were stretches of just lethargy is a great word for it. I don't think USC really was like had a sense of urgency, and I think that you know there's a lot of USC fans that are like, why can't we be like Arizona? They beat, you know, they score 110 points every game against bad teams. They get up up for it and I just don't think that's how we're built. Uh, I think that we play against these teams and and we know we have an advantage and and we kind of coast a bit until we really need to play hard.

Speaker 1: 26:30

Um, and I think that with our bigs again, we had a very unique situation, especially, uh, morgan got the quick early fouls. Vince just is not. You know, those two big, uh, the bigs were over nine, the first half from the field, and so it's like they just. And then Kajani Wright is, you know, looks a little awkward. Aronson Page doesn't know what he's doing yet at all. You know he doesn't know what he's doing. He's, he's right now. He's just, you know, I hold my breath when he's in there because he's very, he's very sloppy. It's funny because he looks completely different than how he looked in game one against Kansas tape right.

Speaker 1: 27:13

And this is again, and I think this goes back to, uh, players being comfortable, uh, in a routine and practice and playing where they're supposed to play. And because of all these injuries, the last few weeks there's been a huge shuffle. I mean, aronson Page started the game against UCI, I believe. So, uh, and he's clearly not prepared to start that game. And and so, down low, you know Morgan, two fouls Vince, who hasn't played in eight months, and he's he looks very rusty. Page, who doesn't know what he's doing. Kejani, who is like, I think, is just fully aware that he needs to step up and he's putting all this pressure on himself so he's like he's pressing when he gets the ball and he's he just needs to settle down a bit. Once, you know, once Kejani settles down, once Page figures out what's going on, once Vince shakes off the rustiness and Josh just stays, josh, all those guys around him down low, I think, will be a good set of bigs.

Speaker 3: 28:20

Yeah, and it's, it's. It's not like because we, because there is some nice depth there. It's not like you need all those uh switches to flip. Yeah, you know, you just need maybe two or three of them in any night and you're good, and just you can identify who's got it.

Speaker 1: 28:34

Precisely. Maybe one night it's Josh and and Page, and one night it's Vince and and Wright, and one night it's Harrison and Vince, and one night it's Morgan and and Page, you know. So it's like you just get some combination of those bigs down low. Uh yeah, feeling good about playing against who they're, who they're trying to defend, hitting those you know, finishing well, doing the little runners, blocking shots, getting rebounds, and there I'll tell you what. There is definitely an issue from a rebounding perspective, and, and what I mean by that is there has to be just a greater emphasis on getting bodies, on people boxing, boxing out Kejani, wright had one, had one play where his guy, he did not box out his man and and he was taken out of the game.

Speaker 1: 29:24

Next dead ball. So they're aware of the issues. They're aware of the issues out there and and and really, these, these bigs, it all starts with the rebounding, once they keep bodies on on their, on their opponents, and box out and get boards and this and I'm saying this even even though that USC had 46 boards in the last game, I think Josh had nine boards, harrison Hornery had nine boards, vince had seven boards, seven boards. So it's like they were boarding but they weren't dominating the boards, and that's a little bit different.

Speaker 3: 30:00

Yeah, interestingly, we actually had a higher offensive rebound percentage than Brown. So as as much as we still suffered that frustration on the defensive end, we were able to more than turn that around when rebounding our own misses, which is yeah what's encouraging, and this is kind of weird, considering that we don't.

Speaker 3: 30:21

my first reaction is okay, when you play zone, you know the kind of the rule of thumb is anything can happen on a rebound because you're not boxing, not a guy. But we don't play zone that much and it's just kind of mystifying that we can, we can get it done on the offensive end, but not the defensive end.

Speaker 1: 30:35

Yeah, well, I think I think Vince showing a little bit of life on the offensive boards against Brown and is Brown, I understand, but Vince is also not yet the Vince he's going to be. So you know there's a little bit of a handicap on both sides there. But Vince, I think he got three or four offensive boards. Offensive boards are all about effort and desire and and you know, being gritty, and I think that's a good sign that that Vince, in his second game back, even if it's brown, is going in there and grinding away for some some very good offensive boards and a couple of cases very key offensive boards. I think at least one of them was converted for a putback.

Speaker 3: 31:14

So, if we go back to what you know Vince is doing on the season you know rebounding only two games but he's played 30 minutes. You know 14.7 rebounds per 40 minutes. It leads the team. So even though he's still, you know, struggling to get his, his sea legs on the offensive end already make an impact on on, you know rebounding now granted that you know he has the benefit of.

Speaker 3: 31:39

I want to say, granted, he has the benefit of going against backups for these other teams, but that should be the case for a lot of this season. So you can expect more of the same and, just you know, improvement, if anything.

Speaker 1: 31:50

But did he? Were they backups though Cause because against UCI? That's true, and UCI and brown he would have, he would have been going against. You know their frontline guys.

Speaker 3: 31:59

Especially brown, which Josh didn't foul trouble he was in earlier than we expected. That's a good point.

Speaker 1: 32:04

Yeah. So anyway, be that as it may, I don't think it's time for USC fans to panic. Usc is. I think the team that we saw against Kansas state is a much better indicator of the team that USC has. And I think, now that everybody is starting to get back healthy and as they start practicing together, playing together for crying out loud, let's get like two games together. The whole roster would be nice, because, because you can't, you can't like substitute for everyone playing together in a regular rotation and a settled rotation in in a real game and a series of real games in live situations. So so, yeah, I think we need to be a little patient on this. This is a potentially fantastic team.

Speaker 1: 32:56

We weren't going to go undefeated. I hate to break it to you guys. Usc was not going to go undefeated this year and it sucks that it had to be UCI at home, but it was a third game of the year, it was a unique circumstance and if USC was going to lose a game, it was probably going to be just this combination of factors coming in Yep, all right. So let's look ahead. Usc plays Seton Hall at 2 30 PM on Thanksgiving. I think most of us will probably just be starting our our maybe the the smashed sweet potatoes portion of the dinner that day. So it should be. Once we settle in, it should be a nice, hopefully the kind of game that will not give most USC fans indigestion.

Speaker 1: 33:46

So, looking at Seton Hall, seton Hall is four and oh, they played St Peters, farley, dickinson, albany and Wagner and they've won around an average of 25, 20 to 25 points for each of them. But those are four teams that were significantly, are significantly, ranked higher, you know, much lower than any team USC has played, except for maybe Cal State, bakersfield. Usc is their first real test and according to the analytics, usc has a 58% percent chance to win. Seton Hall looks like a pretty defensive oriented team, like a lot of teams in the big East, and it looks like probably their best. Their biggest strength is in effective field goal percentage defense. They are in the top 25 in the country in that metric and also they're pretty good at three point percentage defense as well. So defense overall is a strength for Seton Hall, and so I think USC is going to be have to be at the top of their offensive game and you know, I think it all starts with Boogie Boogie, ellis and Isaac Hollier.

Speaker 3: 34:59

Agree. You know, that's one thing that stands out to me when I did a little team profiling of Seton Hall, those four teams and you know again half the mentioned, imagine they've played four Bakersfields. They've held them collectively to a BPO of BPO 100 of 38, which is just ridiculously low. It's stifling. Collectively those four teams have a boost scar of 1.0. So going back to last last podcast, I'm sure there's been a couple of subrico jobs, seton always done on those opponents.

Speaker 1: 35:36

Yeah, so so yeah, it looks like the best the top players for Seton Hall Kadari Richmond is, is probably there a top player he is. Let me see here. He is a 6'6", 205 pound senior. Now, a very interesting point about Seton Hall they start five seniors. Now you know, if you told me someone starts five seniors versus someone starts five top 50 recruits, I would be equally scared.

Speaker 1: 36:20

Yeah, you know like to me, someone who is a senior in college basketball is just about as good as a top 50 recruit, no matter their, their overall ability right and you know it's going to have the same impact in that same year. So Kadari Richmond is their, is their top player. He's a 6'6", 205 pound forward. He he is a pretty good assist man and he makes his free throws at a pretty high rate. So you know he's, he's their leader. Dre Davis is another 6'6" guy. They're a very long team. Dre Davis and Kadari Richmond are both 6'6". Jaden Bediaco 6'10". Al Amir Dawes, their point guard, 6'2", 185" and Dylan Adai Wusu, 6'4". All in all, pretty. You know pretty good size, I think. So it's just you know they're a tough, gritty team and I think it's going to be a challenge.

Speaker 3: 37:24

Yeah, a couple of things that stand out to me. On the offensive end for Seton Hall, they're starting five collectively has a a BPO 100 to 55.7, which is basically you've got like guys, five guys playing at at boogie level. Now that kind of just makes me think that they've really faced again that the quality opponent is just is so bad that it's skewing the numbers. You don't see this, if I saw two guys that were at 60, and others that were you know, high 40s, low 50s, I'd say, okay, it's believable, but this is just teams that they've clearly just have, just, you know, outmaned. I, I think Seton Hall is a good team. I think these numbers are skewed because they've played really just poor, poor teams. You're not going to see five guys that are all that efficient. It's just you know it, just it doesn't happen.

Speaker 1: 38:18

Yeah, yeah, sorry, sorry.

Speaker 3: 38:23

Their Boussqaar is also spread very, you know very well among you know their top four you have 13.9, 9.2, 8.7, 8.0, and then 6.7. It's just, it's, it's, it's too easy all over the place. So you know, either this is, you know, peak jury, Tarkinian, unlv, where everybody can do anything, or there's going to be some regression, is as they face, hopefully you know, a team that can defend significantly better than what they face so far.

Speaker 1: 38:52

Yeah Well, if you look at at their team, they're shooting very well. They they're shooting 52% from the field as a team. Now they're only shooting 31% from three points. So they're getting a lot of points in the paint. They're getting down low.

Speaker 1: 39:05

Kadarii Richmond's a 57% field goal shooter. He's only attempted seven threes. He's only made one of them Right. Dre Davis is a 56% field goal shooter but again, has only shot 8 3's. They have the point guard. L Amir Dawes has shot 26 3cs. Actually pretty good three-point shooter shooting 38.5 percent. But there's not a whole lot of shooting outside of that. So they're not a great shooting team. And also, you know, outside of those top five there's six, seven, eight guys are guys who don't have a lot of experience, freshman and sophomores, so they're not a very deep team. So they're not a deep team, which which leads me to believe that, given how aggressive USC is, they might be susceptible to getting into foul trouble and then they're not a good shooting team on the from the outside. So so if USC can, can play well, I think in USC is a very good. Historically last six or seven years has had a very good two, two-point percentage defense. If USC can keep that up against Seton Hall. I think USC has a clear advantage in this one agree, agree, you know.

Speaker 3: 40:17

The other thing sticks out to me again. This is Hate to just say the same thing, but you have to take it with a green assault with whom they played. Their offensive rebound percentage is 38 percent, which is just off the charts. I mean, think about the worst that we've had and then make it about, you know, incrementally, two times worse, and that's that's basically what they're doing to their opponents. So let's see how that practice goes. You know, translates to a team that is much larger, more athletic and longer than their opponents, yet has shown a little bit of vulnerability on the defensive rebounding side of things.

Speaker 1: 40:54

Yeah, you know, I guess when you you cut to the chase, seton Hall is like a typical Big East team. Right, they, they're a bunch of grinders. They don't shoot that great from outside. They're physical. They play tough defense. Yeah, right, and they're just that's who they are and and they're more tough than athletic and but they're. But you know, last year they were 17 and 16.

Speaker 1: 41:18

The year before that they made it to the tournament, but they haven't really been very good lately since the Andrew Gays years. So so, yeah, so I think USC Looks pretty good going into this game if they can have a good week of practice and If they have everybody healthy. And I think, again, having DJ Robin and back, it sounds good to say, oh, we got Robin and back. But of course You're looking at someone who hasn't also hasn't played together with these guys for an extended period of time. So it's like we're not yet to the point where, like if it was two-thirds the way through the season and DJ Robin missed a game and and then he pops back in, you'd be like, okay, yeah, he picks up where he left off, but but there's no, there's no place where he's left off yet. There hasn't been enough games yet.

Speaker 1: 42:06

So it's like so yeah, so there's a little bit. There's just a little bit of a Adjustment period here where we got to get everybody up to speed, everybody playing together, everybody healthy, and then you know you get that stretch Hopefully as we go into Thanksgiving, the Gonzaga game in December, and then you add in, you just sprinkle in brawny on top and Then you know he's not that disruptive of a addition, and then, and then you, you know you are now in your groove and USC can kind of become the team that it has the potential to be.

Speaker 3: 42:41

Yeah, agree. Two more things on on Seton Hall. Um, you should should just mention, for those who don't know, their coach is actually Shaheen Holloway, who coached st Peters. That's probably why they played st Peters. He left st Peters to, yeah, to go to Seton Hall, and that was the st Peters team that beat Kentucky in the first round and went to the elite eight a couple years ago. The other thing, just going back to you know, if I'm doing some some metrics, scouting by metrics, my hope is that we, you know, we get the best version of Kobe defensively on Qadari Richmond, since he is, you know, they've, they've spread their, their production around, but really he seems to make it go, being by far their best creator for others. Yeah, if, if we get Kobe just, you know, to really be a nuisance to him, I think that could be a big difference in this one.

Speaker 1: 43:35

Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely, I think, really the key. All right, if you look at Kobe Johnson against Brown, he didn't have a single steal. Usc only had one steal in the game, which has not happened in a game since late 2022 and so so it's been a long time since you as he has had as little as one steal in the game, and that's with Kobe Johnson, isaiah Collier and Boogie Ellis in the backcourt. So it was, these were, these were guys that were not in position for that to happen. Yep, right, it was just. You know, kobe was not healthy. Just look at it. He didn't have he didn't have his peskiness that he usually had, and boogie, I don't think, was as explosive as he normally is, and I don't think Isaiah Collier is a hundred percent either, right. So, anyway, if USC beats Seton Hall, it will play either Iowa or Oklahoma.

Speaker 1: 44:29

Now, iowa is right now three and one. They are a high-scoring team. Per usual, they've been very high scoring the last few years, so, but they're also really bad defensive team. I actually think that playing Iowa would be a great matchup for us. It'd probably be a very high-scoring game. Iowa trying to stop Isaiah Collier driving down the lane will probably be very comical. Oklahoma is is for no, and they have four wins against four really bad teams Central Michigan, mississippi Valley State, texas State and UT Rio Grande Valley. So the the Oklahoma Iowa game is going to be a bit of a a bit of a shakedown. Oklahoma is currently got a 25 chem palm rating and Iowa is a 38. One of those teams you know is going to I Would say probably the team that probably has the best chance of winning that game. I think we're most likely gonna play Iowa and, but it's gonna be interesting because of course, iowa is a big 10 team. Who who USC is gonna be playing From next year forward?

Speaker 3: 45:42

Yeah, one thing that's interesting. I don't know if you caught this, um, we're you're not gonna be able to know. You know if we win, we play at time, at time x or time y on Friday. If people want to plan their black Friday, they've set this up so that On Friday's, iowa plays at a certain time. That's already been determined in, oklahoma plays at a certain time. So, depending on which one of those wins and then which one of you know who wins our game against Seaton Hall, that depends on the time it's. It's. I've never seen that before. It's weird. But if you're just trying to, you know plan your your black Friday shopping, just know that you, you gotta get a little creative and triple confirm.

Speaker 1: 46:23

Yeah, that's a great point, I mean, or just do your shopping online.

Speaker 3: 46:26

There you go.

Speaker 1: 46:27

You know, stay at home, sit on the couch and, you know, crank up the game. It's gonna be on Fox Sports 1. I think, and Maybe Fox Sports 2, I'm not sure. But yeah, I think it's gonna be interesting matchups, not the not the greatest matchups, but good, solid Competition for USC basketball Games that we should win and if we want to be a good team, these are games that we really have to win. So hopefully we go down to San Diego, get the two wins and can then get ready for for Gonzaga on December 2nd.

Speaker 3: 47:04

Yeah, yeah, my stretch coming up here. I like it Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 47:07

All right. Well, I think that'll do it for us, for the Dunk City pod brought to you by USC basketball calm. Everybody have a great Thanksgiving, appreciate you, listen to the pod. If you want to follow us on Twitter, we're at USC basketball calm underscore, and you can also find us on tic-tac and on Instagram as well, and Actually not Instagram, but YouTube anyway. So, on behalf of myself and Mark Baxter, mark Mark yes, sir, all right, I don't fight on everyone. Fight on everybody. We'll see you later.