Chris and Mark discuss the debacle in the desert and whether the Trojans might have hit rock bottom. With the UCLA game approaching, other topics include the need for Oziyah Sellers to shoot more three pointers and for Vince Iwuchukwu to get more opportunities down low. It's all about getting USC up to speed to make a run in the conference tourney at season's end.
The Dunk City Podcast is the podcast of record for the USC basketball community. You can find all episodes at DunkCityPod.com, USCBasketball.com or on Apple Music, Spotify and Amazon. Contact us at USCBasketball.com@gmail.com.
Chris and Mark discuss the debacle in the desert and whether the Trojans might have hit rock bottom. With the UCLA game approaching, other topics include the need for Oziyah Sellers to shoot more three pointers and for Vince Iwuchukwu to get more opportunities down low. It's all about getting USC up to speed to make a run in the conference tourney at season's end.
The Dunk City Podcast is the podcast of record for the USC basketball community. You can find all episodes at DunkCityPod.com, USCBasketball.com or on Apple Music, Spotify and Amazon. Contact us at USCBasketball.com@gmail.com.
Welcome to the Dunk City podcast. Change direction by back. This is Final World Life and the tension for the OLS has been put to show. It is on the Trigin' Tundra. Usc is on to the sweet 16. All right, everybody. Welcome back to the Dunk City podcast brought to you by USCBasketballcom. I'm your host, Chris Houston, with my co-host, Mark Baxter. Mark, how's it going?
Speaker 2:I'm as good as could be expected, I guess Well that's good.
Speaker 1:It's always good to be as good as one can be expected to be. Usc, unfortunately is not. They will be playing UCLA next Saturday at Galen at 5 pm on the Pac-12 Network. Last week the Trojans lost at McHale Center 82 to 67 on Wednesday and then on Saturday lost by the identical score of 82 and 67 to the Arizona State Sun Devils. Usc is now 8-11 overall on the season, 2-6 in conference, 11th place in the league right now, currently with a four-game losing streak and what should probably be considered the nadir of this season, I would say, after this past weekend's results. What say you, mark?
Speaker 2:Well, I think nadir might be a little hopeful or optimistic. I don't know what signs we can point to to say this definitively will turn around. There are some bright spots that we'll get to in a bit.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm thinking mainly Boogie Ellis coming back against UCLA. There's another full week for him to recover. I would expect he'll be back against UCLA, and so while Isaiah Collier won't be back, at least some of that scoring will be back, supposedly for the remainder of the season. So that's why I think this past weekend without Collier, without Boogie in the lineup, is probably as low as we're going to get at this point, although it could get worse. I grant you that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, glad we're starting off on a positive note here, although we have lost four in a row.
Speaker 1:It's hard to stay positive of that, but it's good to be constructive. I think, and I think that for us it's just about like we talked about before looking at player development, looking for micro trends within the overall trend that could hopefully point to brighter days ahead.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so with that I think we'll have a little bit of a break from the column this week. I drew some parallels to where we are in the movie Fight Club, which in some ways is about finding oneself and hopefully, as we are hitting rock bottom and have hopefully lost everything and are free to do anything, we take advantage of that and really change some stuff.
Speaker 1:Hopefully nobody gets. No buildings get blown up.
Speaker 2:Well, okay, yeah, I wasn't advocating that, just yet, so reserve the right.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So if we just want to get into it, the one thing that I really really truly need to see is Kobe Johnson just needs to handle a ball considerably less. I'm sure there's some thinking that well, with Boogie out and with Collier out, you know he's really the only one that can handle the offense and it just the metrics just say differently. It's really been just I can't even say just, it's not been good, it's just been disastrous. In his last three games he's had 13 turnovers. His BPO 100 has been a 33.2. This is, like you know, this is the territory of the Russian guy that we had playing for 30 seconds a game last season. Right, and this is. You know, it's such. The offense is just not going to work. It's not working.
Speaker 1:Well, they don't really have a choice at this point. Like he has to touch the ball when Boogie Ellis and Isaiah Collier out of the game, he's going to have to handle the ball at least some of the time.
Speaker 2:Does he, Does he? I just I don't think you can hold on to notions like that. I think now you have to basically test those. But who else?
Speaker 1:is what I'm saying is there's Brani, who's almost as problematic as from a point guard's perspective. Okay, like I'm not saying, I'm not saying he's he's having. He hasn't as many turnovers as as Kobe has had, but a lot of Kobe's turnovers don't necessarily happen in the context of him playing point guard, right. So I just mean to like, some of those turnovers are going to happen whether Kobe is handling the ball or not, the being the main ball. I'm not saying Kobe is not in any way ideally the main ball handler. I'm just saying that when you are down to your third string point guard and you know the guy who's the fourth string point guard, the fourth string point guard is inevitably going to have to, you know, handle the ball a bit in situations like Brani can't play 40 minutes, right. So then you've got Kobe Johnson and those IS sellers and I yep, I just.
Speaker 2:I think it's a time to to think way outside the box, literally who you cannot have more turnovers than than what we've had. I mean, how do we have? Just just just, just watch us, just watch us, don't challenge us. You know that the 15, the marketing campaign 15 turn.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just the 15 turnovers against USC in the first half, against ASU I'm sorry for USC in the first half against ASU was the most by any team in a half this year in the NCAA basketball. So don't, don't tell me USC can't get more than 20 detournovers in a game. They sure can. Well, they surely can when you have your, your, your top two primary ball hand, your top two ball handlers out. Okay, so, and this was exacerbated by hurly implementing a really, really effective full court press against USC, which is something that, mercifully, no other team had done against this lineup Arizona hadn't done it in Colorado hadn't done it. So, yeah, this, so this full court press that ASU did was pretty much withering and created that those, those pretty much the bulk of those turnovers.
Speaker 2:I have to say that's a really generous characterization. I wrote it down really effective full court press, I think. Basically, if you reach in on every play so that you get called for it about a third of the time, well, yeah, I mean this is a.
Speaker 1:This is typical ASU man. You know garbage. You know that they always pull on and it's they're always going to get away with it in Pempe. And for USC to win in Tempe, what always has to happen is USC has to build up a large enough lead. This is the way they've always won in Tempe. They've got to build up a large enough lead to be able to withstand the, the inevitable ASU comeback.
Speaker 1:That is the result of, like you know, them doing all kinds of questionable non calls and calls because Bobby Hurley has intimidated the refs, right. So this is like what happens in. The USC has to, like you know, withstand the onslaught. And you know there's been several times in recent years where where the game came down to this like the last minute, and it was just always a ridiculous call or something that favored ASU, or they completely butcher one of USC's players and not get a call, and then Hurley would complain about it. You know so, but yeah, anyway, point being point of the story is that is that it's always tough to play on the road in the pack 12, but it's especially tough to play in places like Tempe, where it is inevitably going to be a really physical dogfight in which USC has a disadvantage.
Speaker 2:When they're getting those calls. Yeah, you know what was extremely I mean granted, this was 40 minutes of frustration, I'd say about 30 minutes of frustration, but what just really got to me was when they called Kobe for that flagrant foul and they showed replay after replay after replay. Not a single mention of hey here's I think it was Frankie Collins. Here's Frankie Collins, basically this reaching over his shoulder, reaching in and just just just knocking him on his shoulder.
Speaker 2:I mean maybe just once mentioned it, and this is not a knock on Jacobson, and I really like Jason Benetti, but you know, in broadcasting it's not easy, but boy, they kind of missed that angle.
Speaker 1:There was a funny moment in the game where Benetti was making a claim about about steals on Collins's behalf that his average would be able to jump, you know, two points from, you know, from two steals a game to four steals a game If he had a big game against USC, because at that point he'd had six steals already or something. And so Jason's like you'd have to have like 30 steals in a game to go up two point. You know, to go up that much in average and Benetti. And it's kind of sad because Jacobson sort of schooled him a bit and Benetti's just probably not a guy who ever paid much attention to math and he definitely seemed a little embarrassed, I'd say, but it's a little sad.
Speaker 2:And is this where Chris Houston swooshed in and said just watch us, because we were on a pace to help him out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I just I felt sorry for the guy. I felt sorry for the guy, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I like him too, and I don't know if you know his story. He was born with cerebral palsy and he's overcome a lot.
Speaker 1:Oh, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2:Awesome, An ounce, yeah, Wow. Going back to the Kobe Johnson thing, though, I guess you know obviously the turnover.
Speaker 2:Turnover is the one thing, but when he's handling the ball his usage is so high he has used almost twice as much as anybody else and when he's just, when he's not himself and too much to be an asset of him, it's just. It's just it's exponential. You know it's just failure building across failure, and I hate to use that on when talking about a player, but it's just, you know, you just you're asking for more and you're just you're creating more, more opportunities which are not putting your, your players, in a position to succeed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean this. Like we've said before, this is Kobe's team, and as Kobe goes, so goes the team, and so he's not playing well. Yeah, team doesn't play well. Let me just give you a few numbers, since I like to crunch the numbers in a different way than you do. I last four games. These are just basic numbers 41% field goal, 30% from three point right. Last two games 41 turnovers. And then here is the most interesting.
Speaker 1:I think if we're going to talk about anything that's happening in USC basketball right now, it's got to be this, which is that, obviously, going into the season, we saw this as a guard dominated team. We talked about how the big three, would you know, probably have a floor of 40 points and a ceiling of 70 69. And generally, if they scored around 45, 46, 47, usc would be good shape, okay. So again, stanford, I'm dividing this up between players who are listed as guards and players who are listed as forwards. So it might be considered a little bit cheating if you don't consider DJ Rodman to be a big, but he's, but he's listed as a forward. So I'm just going by this. But so again, stanford the guard scored 69 points and the big scored 24 points. Against Washington State, the guard scored 41 points and the big scored 23 points. Against Cal. Against Colorado for the first time all season the bigs outscored the guards. Big scored 30 and the guard scored 28. Against ASU for the second time all season, the big scored 40, the guard scored 27. And also against Arizona I went and I written reverse order. But against Arizona, the big scored 34, the guard scored 33. So for the last three games the bigs have been the prime scores and the team.
Speaker 1:So we talked about this potential sea change. You are seeing Vince Iwachuku take a bit of a step. Last three games he's averaging 10 and eight Yep. He is looking and he's definitely looking very active out there offensively. He's looking motivated. He's definitely looking, starting to look like legitimate five man again. So this is like hugely encouraging. And then Kejani writes generally playing well. I think he's being more assertive on offense. I think the bigs are like saying effort, we're just going to go play, you know, and he's he's looked pretty, pretty nifty at times. And Aaron Tim Page playing a little better. And you know Hornery struggles at times but still still gets his spots here and there. So what do you think about these overall developments? Bigs versus guards.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I hit on that in my column too. I think the first thing that sticks out to me is as efficient as Vince has been over the last three games. Bpo 100 is 66.3, which is just ridiculous. You know, he's been efficient. He's not turning the ball over. His turnover rate is only 7.3%, which is really really low for big men.
Speaker 2:Big men typically just struggle, just hang on the ball and just doing the right thing with it and he's kind of, you know, it seems like the lights which has gone. I want to say back on, because he looked like the best events that we saw last year, to your point. But with that in mind, he needs to be more than fifth in usage rate. You know, over the last five games, last three games, he's fifth on this team. It was really frustrating against Colorado when he was having his way. We talked about it last week. You know he was five of seven against ASU as well. The thing that is frustrating is the seven.
Speaker 2:Now I know that when you don't have your top two playmakers, it's not as easy to create for your big men because, as we've talked about many times, you know this is not Karim Abdul-Jabbar and Bob Lanier who are. You know? Back to the basket, just watch me. Kind of guys. But this is, you know, that's where the bread is going to be buttered. Do you know that we actually shot 53.5% from two against ASU? I did not know that. Yeah, now I would guess that a lot of that is breaking, when we were fortunate enough to break the reach and grab press.
Speaker 1:We're pretty good offense. We're pretty good in the half court offense, for you know, the first half of the game, yeah, when we were able to set up in the half court. We were good. We just couldn't get there because of the damn press.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and again with that in mind, you can't have Vince with your fifth highest usage rate. I don't want to say he's unstoppable, but he's in sellers for the two best you know, most efficient scorers on this team right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you certainly can't do it with this lineup, right, but you know. But there's a few things Kind of a play here. One ASU is sort of the kind of team that Vince can thrive against. They don't really have a lot of bigs. Colorado, that guy, that Lampkin, is a big body but Not the greatest player. But, like we talked about before, he you know Vince has been struggling against everybody. So but yeah, I think you're, I think you're right, I think he should be like the third option right now.
Speaker 2:After I well Not. I'm just kind of curious who should be the first and second option then.
Speaker 1:With this lineup it's got to be like, I mean it's probably got to be sellers and and and Rodman, hmm, because, because those are two guys that are that are pretty much, you know, robin's hitting 38% 3 yeah, I was yeah and Ozai is 41%.
Speaker 2:I was gonna put a little pre-viso on there. I would say it would be Rodman from the perimeter. He really gets himself in trouble when he tries to dribble too much.
Speaker 1:It just he really does you it's it.
Speaker 2:He's really got a big man, big man game when it comes to that specific aspect. But when you mention that, together that's interesting. So maybe we should do. You know, we should really run it through Vince and see how many inside out opportunities we can get from that.
Speaker 1:No, absolutely. But some of the problem is just, it's not just that Vince should be shooting more and isn't it's, it's also like they can't get him the ball, like there's no one who can Complete a post-entry pass very well left on the team.
Speaker 2:Yeah, fair. Um, okay, johnny tried to like roll one to him. That didn't end out too well I mean I was a rough one.
Speaker 1:I mean it wasn't like the worst pass in the world and events was like Was able to bet, you know I had bent his knees a little more and Been a little more and just you know, kind of burst at it instead of, like I thought he kind of went lazily at it. You know what I mean. Yeah if he had just been a little more Urgent than he could, he could have got it, but it shouldn't have been, you know, tossed that way in the first place.
Speaker 2:Well, and you could kind of see the the way he threw that pass. I think that Johnny was put trying to put a lot more English on it, so it would bounce more towards an up him. Yeah and he just didn't get enough spin on it, so it just was kind of like a slider in the dirt.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Away from the batter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, johnny's such an interesting player because because he's he's a really good passer, he's got he's really like fundamentally sound, and you know he just doesn't do anything like particularly well, he just Doesn't do anything poorly either I.
Speaker 2:Would say that you know he does really well, as he understands his limitations.
Speaker 1:Okay, so we talked a bit about Arizona, arizona State. Do you want to? Do you want to talk about a little theory you have on the season, about we know why things went wrong?
Speaker 2:Well, I guess the bad news, jesus, the good news is the bad news is the good news is that we've had so much time to think of theories like this that this isn't my only one. I'll run this one by you. It's not my best one, but Seeing as we're just past only mid-January and how the season's gone, I think we might. We might have time to revisit a couple more of these. I guess I'd say I'm gonna pull up my game log here for USC. So Before the Long Beach State game we had a offensive BPO of 51 and After that's dropped to a forty seven point. Oh, before the Long Beach State game our defensive BPO was a forty seven point nine. Since then it's up to a forty nine point four. What? What happened In the Long Beach State game? That's kind of carried forward since, and this might not be going where you might think it be going, but I would say the fouling.
Speaker 2:Well, okay, there's that. Yeah, I'm going with. That was brawny's debut. Yes, and I am not putting this at all on brawny, I don't, I can't remember if this is the Floyd era or the guy after him, but there was a game I don't know if you remember this or you you saw it where Deandre Jordan and Blake Griffin stood under the visitors basket of the second Half of a home game and Galen Mm-hmm, I think it was against Washington and they couldn't hit a free throw after that. They just got nervous, yeah, and I'm wondering if something kind of broke when the players had the chance to play in front of LeBron, hmm, and that just kind of just just it just kind of snapped. Whatever kind of chemistry and cohesion that we might have had, this isn't my best theory, but it's not one that I can just just just totally throw.
Speaker 1:You know, just totally just Discount or exclude so, yeah, I think that kind of the overall symbolism of it might be a Might bring you closer to the mark and meaning that USC, being in Los Angeles, has this propensity to market its teams as Glitzy, glamour Hollywood types.
Speaker 1:Right, that's you know they want to do the association with Hollywood, with the famed celebrity, so on and so forth. In general the football program has been able to handle that and in fact there's only really only been one time they've had to handle it and they kind of handled it and and then it kind of fell apart right. And Recently they tried to take that mantle again of like the being the celebrity affiliated team and it kind of blew up in their face. This past year. Usc basketball has Never been a spotlight team and One of the frustrations of USC basketball fans over the years is that when the team is slated for High rankings, predicted to do well, they've A few you know several of these times when they, when this has happened, they've not performed well, right, I think obviously to that point.
Speaker 2:I'm sure you remember this when, when in in Enfield's third year I think it was third year when we finally got ranked. I think we got ranked once or twice and each time we immediately lost. Yeah, yeah, whatever that's worth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think I think I remember that. Yeah, exactly, so, obviously, like this year was, goes down, goes down as one of those years 2017-2018 Goes down as one of those years to some extent, 2007-2008, with OJ Mayo, that team did go to the tournament but it was kind of a underwhelming kind of season and they had a quick, early exit in the first round against Kansas State. Going back even further, you can look at the, the team that came back, don't say it. Don't say it after the elite eight run that lost to UNC Wilmington. That team was supposed to be better than it ended up being. Even though it played, even though it did pretty well, it was, I think, a little bit disappointing. And then going back further to to 90, some of those early like like 94, 95 teams, 92 lived, lived up.
Speaker 1:You know, surpass billing right, they were expected to be a good team but they ended up being a great team. But there's there's been a few times where when USC has you know they're predicted to be do really well and has sort of melted under the under the pressure. So maybe what you're saying about brawny coming back against Long Beach State, it's the glare of the spotlight that brawny brought and LeBron brought, maybe overall the extra attention, maybe maybe that's one of those things where you go out there and you're not really Got your head, you don't really have your heads on straight when you're trying to play the game.
Speaker 2:So maybe. So okay, yeah, you think there's a little bit of merit there. One to ten sounds like maybe a five.
Speaker 1:On one to ten, I wouldn't give it a five, six then it's like a seven. No, no, no. I lower than a five, definitely low.
Speaker 2:I know.
Speaker 1:All right. So that is your interesting theory. It's not a bad theory, it's. That's worth talking about. But what's funny is when you talk about chemistry, there's all sorts of little Potential inflection points with this team where you could be like maybe it was because of this person, right, like Isaiah Collier is a new player on the team, maybe it was because of him, or maybe it was because of DJ Rodman, or maybe it was because you know vinston come back in time, and maybe it was because you know brawny coming in right. So there's Maybe it's erranton page, maybe he's the guy that's responsible for for the team, that message. I don't know. There's like there's so many different possibilities. I Just chalk it up to. They didn't. They didn't have a good thing going in the beginning. They showed some flashes of signs of doing things good and doing things well, but they didn't get it all together in time before the injuries hit and then, once the injuries hit, that pretty much precluded any chance of them.
Speaker 2:You know figuring it out and so nothing to reach back on, yeah and so and you don't have those.
Speaker 1:You know people talk about oh USC wasn't good with Collier and boogie right, they weren't. They weren't playing well with them, so why would they play any better? Well, look, I think I think USC probably beats Colorado with With those guys playing, because Colorado was definitely not playing very well. Colorado was looking to lose that game From the, from the get-go, and they did not want to be there until USC just Couldn't, couldn't close the deal and they're like, okay, I guess we'll just go win and and Arizona didn't really play that well. They, considering who, the level of team they were playing, they didn't really play that well.
Speaker 1:Usc played pretty well in the first half, but you can't tell me that if brawny I'm sorry, if boogie and Collier were there that that USC Might not have made a run at that game and say with the same with ASU. So the thing is, the potential is always there for USC to, if not necessarily Get things completely righted, to at least salvage enough of the season to make it respectable. Mm-hmm, right and then. But now we're left to the point where what we're really playing for is the pretty simple strategy, which is get as many of these guys developed as possible and Then get Collier back in time for the Pac-12 tournament and Just try to win four games.
Speaker 2:Yep, and, and do not overlook that we still have one more shot, or in some cases, I think well, and I know, at least in the case of UCLA, we have to play every team at least one more time, so you have one more chance to basically, you know, say well, we beat these guys at least, which is no small thing if you're out there on social media.
Speaker 1:Well, it'll certainly make the fans feel better to be able to have a little ammunition. Of course, usc plays UCLA on Saturday, that's at 5 pm at Galen Center. I hear the game is sold out. It'll be an ESPN 2. For those of you who are going to the game, let's talk now. Well, I think you wanted to do a little question time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, unrehearsed question. Have not run this by you. I don't even know where I land on this. I'm curious where you're going to land and see how that influences how. I think this is not to crap on anybody. It came to me. If you could go into your time machine and go back to April or whenever this happened, if you could just basically undo what was essentially the roster trade of DJ Rodman for Trey White, would you Okay?
Speaker 1:I'm going to answer that. Then I'm going to throw a question back at you which is similar.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Okay, I would probably have kept Trey White, if only because, being a sophomore, he would potentially have obviously a couple more years of eligibility left to play for USC. Rodman brings three-point shooting and a little bit more savviness, but Trey White brought just as much scoring, even though he's not as good of a shooter and I think is probably just a strong rebounder, not as good of a defender, but not but not. It's not like Rodman's a great defender. So I think it's kind of as players in this individual season they're kind of a wash. But because White has the extra eligibility, I would take White.
Speaker 2:Yeah, do you think White would struggle to have found a role in this offense, like DJ has for much of the season?
Speaker 1:Oh, definitely, and I'm pretty sure that's why one of the reasons why he left. Because if you are a guy who, this is definitely a guy who wants to shoot the ball right, and now you've got Boogie back for another year, You've got Collier coming in, You've got Braun, you've got all these guys. At the time there was Sawas-Stemmery coming in, you know, Kobe coming back, all that stuff. So these were guys. You know. I think that he just wanted to be the star on a team, or he wanted to have a chance to be the main guy on a team, the main option. So he wasn't going to be that for another year. And for some of these guys it's like they've only got a limited, they've only got a few seasons to show what they can do, and I understand some of these guys wanting to get more playing time. So I don't. I think he's doing okay at Louisville. I haven't checked lately, but I don't think he's setting the world on fire over there either.
Speaker 2:So a lot of the same. His metrics sorry, his metrics are literally like identical to last year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what I recall.
Speaker 2:It's amazing. His rebounds per 40 are like the same as BP100 is like within 0.2 of last year's, which is you know. On the one hand it's a little concerning, but that program's a complete dumpster fire. We don't think that we're having it bad. That program's a real rough watch and I don't you don't know how much of it is All right, there's nothing going on there and he's just symptomatic of that. Or geez, can't, can he be like the good score on a bad team guy that we always you know, you often see.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, not exactly. So here's my question to you.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:If you you know, when Boogie Ellis came back to play for another year for USC, silas Demery Jr transferred over to Georgia. If you could do it all over again, would you keep Silas Demery Jr and have Boogie go, you know, pro or wherever he was going to go?
Speaker 2:It's funny. You mentioned that and I didn't think of it in terms of the Boogie context, but I thought of it in terms of I wonder what DeMerry's doing? He's, he's having a really good freshman season, as from what?
Speaker 1:I recall it's pretty good, he's not. He's not shooting. Well. He's he's, I mean, he's not doing, he's not like he's. He's averaging 10 points a game, five boards, three assists. Um, yes, he's, he's a starter. You're kind of going.
Speaker 2:Yes, you're kind of outlining why we like brawny so much.
Speaker 1:Right, and then he's a, but he's 32% three point shooter. I think he's hadn't been shooting well. He started to shoot a little better and he's shooting 44.5%. Not the most efficient player. He does play 27 minutes a game, so, but yeah, I mean. So what would you say? Would you? Would you have rather kept a? Have a Silas Demery Jr and and Isaiah Collier back court, like it was originally planned, or would you prefer to keep Boogie back?
Speaker 2:Um, am I allowed to ask does Boogie go to another team or is he off in the NBA? Specifically, can can he come back to bite us?
Speaker 1:No, can't come back to bite us. He's, he's off to try and buy his wares.
Speaker 2:I, yeah, I would go with the, with the, the DeMerry, um, demery, demery, demery, pardon me, um, much for the same justification. Even more so, um, and and and it's exactly because, you know, despite what we thought coming into the season, just the pieces don't seem to fit in the back court. Um, you know, I had a, I had a column where I'm basically saying, hey, have Bronny at no-transcript. I just clearly I'm up for, for breaking things and trying anything new and and that will be one of them. And this is not a slight at boogie at all. I mean, god bless the guy. He clearly worked his his butt off in the in the offseason and took a huge step forward, but it's it's. It's not shown up in the in the one-loss record.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, absolutely I mean. But you know, obviously Brotty is struggling at point guard as well. He had, you know, he had five turnovers against Arizona. He had three more against ASU. He's we basically have a lot of. We have three players who are De, you know, decent ball handlers as as off guards, but they're not very good ball handlers as point guards.
Speaker 1:So I Think when you had that situation, you're just it's kind of inevitable, you're gonna have, you're gonna have a lot of turnovers. I think I don't think there's any way around it. You're just gonna see a lot of turnovers out of this crowd until Until it's kind of funny to say, until I tell you a collier gets back, you're just not gonna see as many turnovers are you gonna see a lot more turnovers until he gets back. But yeah, it's just when you don't have a lot of ball handlers, you're just gonna see a lot of sloppy play, unfortunately. So but yeah, I mean, I think I agree with you, know it. Obviously, knowing what I know now, there probably would have been very little to lose in going with Demary Jr, because certainly I Guess USC potentially maybe would have a bad season as well. But there's always the chance that maybe that special little mix of those two guys playing at the same time or rotating them. You know, maybe that would have had a different effect on the overall team. Who knows?
Speaker 2:And, and maybe kind of to one of my things, I've been pushing that for a while. Maybe that gives sellers a lot more opportunities and a higher use of Drake in the meantime too, which, yeah, I think Would have unlocked unlocked something at this point now.
Speaker 1:Well, can we? I just want to know, can we get him to shoot a, shoot a three-pointer once in a while, because he didn't shoot a three. He didn't shoot a three pointer against Arizona State and it's sellers. He didn't shoot, he didn't attempt one. I just don't, I don't understand it. He's shooting 41% from three and every time the ball is kicked out to him, are rotated over to him, he does the, he does the pump fake at the line and then and then comes up for either a runner or a or a long two Right, and I just, I, I just don't get it. He's the last two games. He's he's shot three, three pointers and this is our best three-point shooter. He's just. He's just refusing to shoot three pointers.
Speaker 2:It's like he's.
Speaker 1:I don't know if he's like I don't know if it's like this thing. It's kind of like he's like a batter who's hitting, who's hitting, or 400, and so he. So he, he like, wants to take a, take as many walks as possible. You know, he's like trying to protect his average or something that is our like quarter. He's like a quarterback who takes, who keeps taking sacks so he won't throw in completions. I mean, I'm obviously I'm exaggerating a bit, but he's shooting 41. He's only shot 39 three pointers on the year. Right, kobe Johnson has attempted 82 three pointers. Jesus Boogie Ellis has attempted 112. Right, boogie Ellis is great three-point shooter.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:Kobe Johnson. I don't blame him for attempting because because a lot of these shots he's trying is trying to shoot or in situations where you know someone has to score Right, yeah, someone has to test to give it a go and he's shown he could shoot in the past and he's on up, he's on a horrible, you know he, he had that horrible plunge, horrible slump, and then he kind of perked up for a little bit and then now he's back in the slump again. But Oziah has two-thirds of the attempts that DJ Rodman has. He only has seven more attempts than brought in James, who was played in Seven fewer, eight fewer games. You know he's a legitimate three-point shooter like I. Just I just don't understand why he isn't taking those threes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's. That's a fair point. I thought that, instead of like the, the quarterback taking sacks to protect his numbers, I was thinking more. Maybe it's like the, the, the guy who just hits to the opposite field just to prove that he can, and so maybe, maybe you know, I mean just like yeah, I, can I get him down from mid-range to yeah?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I want to read it. I'm not like I'm, I don't really think that's what he's doing, but I do think there is a little bit of that like that shooters that sort of he wants to get into a shooter's rhythm and so what he ends up doing is he doesn't want to take a bad shot, and he already doesn't. He wants to, like, make sure his three-point shot goes in. So it's like he wants to make sure he can really get the ideal, you know, off the dribble situation or catch and shoot situation, where he just feels totally comfortable. If he doesn't feel totally comfortable, he passes it up, because I think he just feels that, as if I think he feels that right now, the way he's shooting, that if he's comfortable or if he's in a an advantageous position, then he's probably gonna make it. I think that's why he's doing it, but I really think they USC needs him to shoot more, because I Think if he could shoot with some volume it'd be nice, because, yeah, the team needs more scoring.
Speaker 1:Absolutely yeah, I Clearly yeah okay, how about I also have a? There's a rumor that we're gonna have marks mean a minute, yeah, um this.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know if it'll last a minute. This is a really quick point and this this really made me. I don't fight mad, but I'll just say it got my attention. How much of a jerk do you need to be when you're 16 minutes into a game? Your opponent basically is scoring most of their points from the paint. They have not shot a free throw and there's a single questionable call that goes against you and you run onto the court and you get a Technical because that goes against you. You've been knocking everybody around in that one play. That goes against you. You have to run on the court and get a technical.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's.
Speaker 2:Bobby Hurley, what is your?
Speaker 1:problem man, this guy. He's Really an embarrassing individual on the court. I just yeah he's. The antics are just Unbecoming. That's it's really why I hate playing Arizona State. Just having to deal with he's like the, the, the, the visual version of Bill Walton.
Speaker 2:Doesn't ASU game. You're just, you're out. You're just, you're like exactly having to listen.
Speaker 1:Having to listen to Bill Walton While I'm watching Bobby Hurley is like college basketball hell.
Speaker 2:Oh yes, it's, it's the Nadir the Nadir.
Speaker 1:Okay, the Bruins are coming up on Saturday 5 pm and Galen gonna be sold out. Now the Bruins have actually had some good things go their way of late. They beat Arizona State in 10 p and then they gave Arizona quite a battle before losing by six, so Definitely played better. They also beat Washington at home, so they are their winners of two of their last three after losing their previous four. This is very much a game that could go either way. I don't think anybody can pretend to know what's actually gonna happen. But certainly UCLA training up at this time has got to be worrying for the Trojans. But if the Trojans can get Boogie Ellis back and continue the upward trend, or their bigs and you know, everyone's gonna come to play that game. And I think when USC comes to play At Galen against UCLA they tend to win. But this is also a really tough year, so in really tough years Bad things can happen. So what do you think about this game, mark?
Speaker 2:I don't know if you saw just going back to that Arizona game where it kind of fell apart for UCLA. Did you see Cronin's quote? He had a great one.
Speaker 1:I didn't?
Speaker 2:he said basically, he said we were doing well until the game became an Unofficiated street fight and we were unable to throw a pass. He's I don't know, I'm supposed to hate UCLA and I respect him as a coach. He's a great quote and he sees, you know he does. He's not a crap talker when it comes to us too. But doesn't mean I don't want to win this game at all. Oh my god, I want to win this more than probably any game.
Speaker 2:Yeah accepting, maybe Oregon. Having said that this we've hit on it a couple times this team is. Maybe they've improved a bit lately, but just for the season. The offensive metrics are just horrible. Of the guys that actually play, only one has a BPA 100 of over 50s 46, wow, and that that's will McLendon, who I? I just remember seeing him last year and thinking why is this guy even on the court? Yeah, he's better this year, but when he's your best player, you have got some serious problems offensively.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're. They're a team that is, they just got a bunch of young guys and there's some good talent there, but there's a lot of guys who don't know how to play college basketball yet. And then Mick Cronin comes in with this Euro recruiting class and I think only one of them has really turned out to be Doing much, even, and even he's not doing as well as they expected. So this is definitely a team that USC can beat. Whether they will, I don't know, but I think at Galen Center, with the crowd rocking, boogie comes back. This would be a great game for the Trojans to come out and play their best and then try to Just scratch and claw for some wins, because after UCLA, oregon comes to Galen Center and then Oregon State. So at least Having some teams at home and not going on the road will be a nice Kind of a nice change for USA.
Speaker 1:It feels like they've been on the road all year. They just came off three straight road games. I mean they have four straight road games before hosting Cowan Stanford. So Just, it just feels like they're constantly on the road. So now the rest of the way out, there's a better collection of home games and so USC hopefully Can start playing a little bit better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, agree. One thing that's interesting I did. I did some home and away splits. Our defense is kind of basically the same level on the road at home and it's basically because we're just not not good. Yeah, the road home splits, though. We're 20% more efficient at home versus on the road and conference play.
Speaker 2:So maybe that's the boost we get. I think it needs to be On the other side of the of the ball Boy. You've just got one other, just little nugget here. Ucla's player with their highest Buscar is Sebastian Mack, with a boost gar of 22.9. That would put him fourth on USC man. It's just, you've got the classic what do they call it? Movable object versus the resistible force? Yeah, in terms of their offense versus our defense, it'll be interesting now. Now, boy, when they're at their best. You see, la I I've mentioned this before specific to to them At their best, they don't even just keep you from getting your best shot, they keep you from even getting the ball where you're positioned to make the pass, to get your best shot.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't know if they're there yet, but no, I don't know. If you notice, we had the little problem at the point guard position in the last few games.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:But that that that I will see, how much that changes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I will say USC, the, the veteran, I mean the veteran leadership of USC should carry them through this type of game. Yeah, boogie Alice, you got Kobe Johnson, got DJ Rodman, harrison, horners, a junior these guys have been there before. So I think there's going to be more guys on USC who are not kind of scared of the situation than the UCLA guys. Yeah, that's true, um, but that doesn't mean that doesn't necessarily have to mean anything, because, because some of these veterans have been playing, uh, the worst basketball, right. If you go look at the USC Arizona game, uh, the guys who had the most turnovers were Kobe Johnson and DJ Rodman, who were, uh, the team captain junior, and the and a fifth year senior, our fourth year senior, but and the guys who, who were the younger guys, had fewer turnovers. This, in some cases, being a veteran Uh isn't always, um Isn't always an advantage. In the case with USC this year.
Speaker 1:Yeah so, all right, both teams are 8 and 11, so, um, whoever comes out on top will have the big momentum going into the last half of the pack, 12 season. So is there anything else you want to add, mark?
Speaker 2:Um, no, just as always, fight on everyone.
Speaker 1:All right, fine out everybody. We'll see you at Galen on saturday against UCLA.