Mark and Chris discuss USC's 65-50 loss to UCLA and look for answers as to why the Trojans continue to struggle. They also look to the future and project what the roster might look like next season in the first year in the Big Ten. Could Trent Perry be the next great USC player?
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.
Mark and Chris discuss USC's 65-50 loss to UCLA and look for answers as to why the Trojans continue to struggle. They also look to the future and project what the roster might look like next season in the first year in the Big Ten. Could Trent Perry be the next great USC player?
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 basketball and the final round of life Elton Hansen, Corgi, Ellis and the good show it is on the Trojan Tundra.
Speaker 2:USC is on to the sweet 16.
Speaker 1:And welcome back to another episode of the Dunk City podcast brought to you by usebasketballcom, your home for USC basketball online. I'm Chris Houston here with Mark Baxter. Usc is in a tailspin. Just lost its fifth consecutive game with a 65 to 50 loss to UCLA. On Saturday, usc scored a season low 50 points. Things don't seem to be getting better. Like I said, it's been five straight losses, 10 of 13. Usc has not lost three in a row since 2020. It's actually pretty amazing, if you look back at the last four seasons, how USC always bounced back after a couple losses. Usc hadn't lost four in a row since 2019 and had not lost five in a row since 2015, which, of course, was the year that USC and Andy Anfield's second season finished last in the league. So that's a little bit of background going into these. This week's game Oregon on Thursday at Galen Center and Oregon State on Saturday. So, mark, what say you about the latest developments in Trojan basketball?
Speaker 2:Well, I think it kind of says it all, when we had a podcast that was titled the Nadir and that seems like the good old days.
Speaker 1:Let's call this the Nadir part two.
Speaker 2:The Nadir of the Nadir man. Yeah, that was a rough watch and don't want to say it happened in a blink of an eye, it was. It was a little too long for that. But a 20 to O run, that's just not fun to be a part of, especially going back to my column comparing the team to the the horse team. Obviously, when we get distanced that much, we're just, we're just not going to come back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you were. You were talking recently in this latest column that was released today at the Dunk City blog that USC has been the victim of these what you call spurts of death, and obviously against UCLA. That was a really bad one. And one thing I've noticed about these spurts is that not only are they happening, but a lot of them seem to be happening, often toward, let's say, the final five to six minutes of the first half.
Speaker 1:I feel like they're happening and what's happening. Usc has been typically I shouldn't say typically, but of late has been getting off to some pretty good starts played very well Against Colorado in the first half. Played pretty well against Arizona in the first half. Played pretty well against Arizona State. Played pretty well for a chunk of the first half against UCLA. And then what seems to happen is right as they get comfortable and probably too comfortable, the other team goes on a run, heads into halftime with a little bit of a cushion and then invariably is able to fend off USC the rest of the way. That's kind of been what's happening, right?
Speaker 2:I agree, and when we get to my theory this week about what might be causing the issues here, I'll get a little more detail about that. But I agree, there seems to be there seem. I don't know if it's a let up or a reversion, I'll just keep it at that for now. But there is definitely a change in tenor of I don't want to say effort, but I'd say maybe locked in. This is the kind of season it's been.
Speaker 2:I've just in my mind, I've come up with the levels of engagement or play, if you will. Level one is you're engaged and you're mentally locked in, and that's obviously whatever team wants. Level two is you're engaged but you're not mentally locked in. And level three is just you're just kind of indifferent If there's any good news.
Speaker 2:I think we had a lot of level three. Remember around December when I said I just wish somebody would push somebody on our team or the other team. Yeah, there was a lot of level three and I don't see level three anymore. I see more level two stuff. It seems like we were starting recently level one, where we're playing hard and we're mentally engaged, but at some point just we slipped to level two and just with the effort still there, but just the focus isn't. And if you want one example of it, I in my life have never seen so many opposing three point shooter shot over a season, let alone in half a season or two thirds or however far we are. It's amazing, that's just. That's just a sign that just you know the efforts there, but it's just the brain isn't locked in.
Speaker 1:Are you talking about the fouling of the three pointer?
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah.
Speaker 1:These have been killer for USC all year, have really affected the ability of the team to sort of put other teams away or to stay close to teams. It seems like they always come at very inauspicious moments. So, yeah, it's definitely a problem. I don't know how you solve that. I mean, these are it's kind of the problem that we've had all year, right where it's like these. A lot of these players are veteran players.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, and it's just mentally. I don't know. If you know, it's really hard to get inside people's heads and we don't really know what is going on in the inner workings of the team or when these guys are sleeping in their bed at night looking up at the ceiling. I don't know what they're thinking, but one can only surmise that. But if I had to guess it's, it's sort of the, the let down of not living up to what they had hoped. Perhaps hit a certain point in the season where they lost a couple games they had hoped they, they had sort of visualized winning, and when they didn't win them they just thought, well, what's the point? I don't know. Maybe maybe that's what they thought, or maybe they thought, oh heck, you know, maybe we're not as good as we thought we were, and so it just created this kind of chain events, chain of events that created this downward spiral.
Speaker 1:I don't really know how else you can explain it, because obviously we're looking at players who played very well in the past Kobe Johnson, for example, who has had a good, who was coming off a really good season, and Boogie Ellis, who is is having a good season to a point, but has really had stretches where, sometimes due to injury, sometimes due to other things, it's just not been able to play at his peak, certainly not at the explosive peak that he had last year. And then you have some guys like DJ Rodman, who are newcomers but veterans nonetheless, and they're just, they're just not playing. It's like the roster looks good on paper, but then you get them on the court. They don't play together well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and in fairness to DJ, you know we've kind of hit it on this a few times. And when the the team doesn't really have an offensive identity, how do you figure out a way to put yourself into that? If, if, if you don't understand exactly what the rules and expectations are, and that's it's kind of a presumption on my part, but if you look at the offense, it's not a huge leap of faith. How do you know? Oh, I'm supposed to fit in here or there. It just I can't. I can't recognize what we're supposed to be doing on offense.
Speaker 1:for the most part, Well, I think to that point, I think for a while we had that identity right. It was three point shooting team, four out one in being outside in team. If you look at go look at the three point attempts of this team this year and right around up to Stanford. As recently as Stanford, usc shot 25 three point attempts and before Stanford it had shot no fewer than 19 in a game. So it had shot between 19 and 31. In fact it was this was the most prolific three point shot attempting team at USC since the early 90s.
Speaker 1:Art was on pace to be, but when Isaiah Collier got hurt, when Boogie Ellis got hurt, this sort of created less of a volume of three point attempts and we saw more inside play. We talked about the shift from this outside into maybe some inside out. Last five games 21 attempts, 17 attempts, 24 at Arizona, but then 15 at Arizona State and 13 season low, 13 attempts versus UCLA. And you mentioned in your column some of the bright spots, including Ozai sellers and last four. He is now averaging 11 points per game. He is six of nine on three pointers. He has not attempted more than three three pointers in a game since the third game of the year. He's now shooting 44% from three point range. I want to see this guy start throwing up some. Start throwing up some balls.
Speaker 2:Yeah, where I heard that before my gosh?
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's, it's frustrating. I've His BP at 100 of 120 is just unreal, it's it's. It's by far the highest number I've seen for anybody that's played more than like three minutes and had more than like two, you know two opportunities. Yeah, it's just, it's, it's nuts. I mean, we're just, we're kind of I don't want to say we're wasting a hot streak, but we're definitely not capitalizing on, on what could be just a, you know, torn down on the same par is as buggy last year At well last year.
Speaker 1:To some extent it is a bit of a curated hot streak, right?
Speaker 1:Because, like I mentioned, we mentioned on the podcast last week, it does seem to be that he is really he's not really shooting his three pointers unless he is in just the ideal situation to make it Right. He is waiting till he's absolutely open, either catch and shoot or coming off his dribble drive. But he likes to, as we talked earlier, he likes to get the ball starting from outside the three point arc and he likes to drive it and either you know, floated the lane or work it down low and do a turnaround. And these tend not to be very high percentage shots, although he is making a lot of them of late. But he has the potential to be the kind of guy who goes, comes in and goes four of four of nine from from three point range or something, and he's just not. You know, to some degree it's the fault is because they're not getting the shots for him, but I think the other factor is that I think he is not being as aggressive as he can be.
Speaker 2:Fair. Now we don't know what's what's being coached and what he's being told. So I don't know. I've, I've, I've never gotten the feeling that Enfields wanted to tell somebody you know, you don't take this shot or that shot. It seems like players have a lot of offensive freedom. So to your point, maybe somebody needs to have the different kind of talk to them and say do you realize how good you are and do you realize how much even better you could be? Yeah, if you, just you know you, you, you get that, you know that beast inside of you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, he definitely needs to. I mean, he's going to. I assume he will be probably starting the rest of the way of the regular season. I think at this point I think you'd have to start him along with with Boogie and then at some point I think you really have to look at what what Kobe Johnson is bringing to the team right now, because the way he played against UCLA he played 37 minutes, scored eight points, he was three of seven shooting, he didn't have any turnovers but, interestingly, no steals. And when, when Kobe doesn't have any steals out there, when he's not doing a whole lot of things defensively and then he's not scoring, then you're really not getting much out of him.
Speaker 1:And so and so and in these other games against Arizona, arizona state, he took 16, 17 shots in each game very low percentage. His shooting struggles right now are just really really killing the team. He's shooting 38% on the year, 29,. Less than 29% from three point range, even even at the free throw line, only shooting 75% for a guy who last year, I think, was at 86 plus. So you can't tell me that so much of this isn't mental and I think that there's just not the right mental makeup on this roster and I don't think you're going to be able to find it the rest of the year. So I think it's really just about seeing who can step up in that area, who can step up mentally, because we know there are guys who can step up physically, although because they're not mentally strong, they're not able to put a number of physically impressive games together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree. Sorry to make this the I agree podcast, but you know our questions. Our problems are manifest and very clear.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and just in addition to Kobe, of course, there's the issue with with Brani who again, is just on a, really continues to be on a really rough stretch. Right, he did have a pretty solid game against Arizona, but 0 for three against UCLA. He is now gosh. He is two of his last 15, I think, from three-point land and that's really what you're going to get out of him the most because because because of his size, he doesn't really play on offense, he doesn't really play tall among the trees, it's hard for him to get a shot off, hard for him to create a shot down low. So he's pretty much a catch and shoot or off the dribble guy, but mostly a catch and shoot, three pointer, three point attempt.
Speaker 1:So you know, it's just when you're not getting a whole lot, when you're getting nothing out of Isaiah Collier, because he's hurt, nothing out of Kobe Johnson because he's mentally exhausted, nothing out of Brani James, because he's just a freshman and he's at the wall and he's still working through these things. That's a huge chunk of your, of your potential offense. That's just and really getting nothing out of Harrison Hornery, who's shooting 28% on the year. So you've got these guys who there's some guys who are shooting fantastically on the year there's like three guys who are shooting really well and everybody else is shooting horribly. So you know you're just. If you can't score, you can't overcome the bad defense, because it's pretty clear right now that they don't want to play defense either. So you're looking at a team that just doesn't feel like doing much of anything right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Don't know if we want to put that on any promo posters. I guess Not an easy team to be a fan of. I'll put it that way.
Speaker 1:Well, I think I'll never not be a fan of the team and I'll hope that they keep improving and playing hard and, you never know, the light goes on at some point. I've certainly seen weirder things, but it's so befuddling and it's it's. It's really sad because because I do think these are good players and I think that people who are, who are just, you know, criticizing, look, obviously, this is all in the end, this is all the coaches responsibility, but I think it's not as simple as oh Enfield did this. So therefore, this right, I think that he had a certain set of assumptions that he could safely make, which is the same set of assumptions that everybody else in the country made about USC basketball Yep, same media members, same fans.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of people posting on the message board who are talking about this as if this was a feta complet or something. But you know they didn't. They weren't showing up posting on the message board before the season talking about how USC wasn't going to be very good. They only showed up when USC started playing poorly. So I can only I can assume that is only because people did not expect this to happen. So and there's a reason people didn't expect it to happen is because USC had a bunch of good players and people can say, oh well, it's X's and O's. Well, it's the same X's and O's that got USC to the lead eight. The same guy doing X's and O's that as one more games the last five years and at any point in in program history. Right, so he didn't suddenly stop doing X's and O's.
Speaker 1:There's some people out there who are now tracking Enfield's record since his contract extension. I guess the claim is that since he got his money, therefore he's not working as hard. So like this is the implication. Is there is there any evidence of this? Like I mean, I know there's this and there's the outcomes of the games. But I guess it's just as valid as my assumption about the players being mentally exhausted. But I think that's what's kind of sad about this whole situation is that we are left to speculation about what's going on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's frustrating, although I don't know it makes for better chatter than what. About 10 years ago would it have been, when we had the last guy, when it was just clear that? Just it was just, it was no good, it was the not getting better. And yeah, there's no chance on the wrong side of the basketball Berlin wall. Yeah it's kind of how it felt like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and unfortunately there's a lot of those those same feelings are back because there's people who are pushing this narrative that, yeah, that USC is going to be a last place team in the big 10 next year. There's a long way to go, people. You don't know who's going to be on the team. You don't know who the other teams are going to have on their team. Slow your roll, you don't. You know, just like you didn't know enough how USC would do this year until it happened. You're not going to do next year until it happens.
Speaker 2:Well, and in fairness, these people haven't really had anything to say for four years, so they've probably got a lot of pent up frustration to get out.
Speaker 1:Well, right, I mean, there is such a thing as as having what's called what's soccer, he's called correct opinion. Right, if you have an opinion, and you have as many opinions as possible, some of them are going to end up being correct at some point. So congrats to everybody who who finally had their opinions validated over a large sample size. So way to go. Anyway, let's talk a little bit about a theory that you have, mark.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Now this is. This is kind of a stretch and it's a little involved, so just hang with me and if you want to tear it apart, that's kind of the point of the exercises a good exchange of views.
Speaker 1:Go ahead, go ahead. I'm just going to drink some water while you talk.
Speaker 2:Okay. So my this theory that I'm going to present is it basically when we were putting together kind of like what this team is going to look like. When I say we, I mean the coaching staff, because we pretend like we're coaches, but when the coach is basically saying what's this team going to look like? This theory is basically positing that ball movement in the half court was not made a part of the team's offensive DNA. Given, number one, the skill set of Isaiah Collier and, number two, the expected defensive prowess of this team, that would lead to a lot of easy buckets. And I think that I'm not saying that we never practiced passing the ball, but I'm saying that when it came to really drilling in what the identity of this team is going to be offensively, it was not predicated on you're going to move the ball, you're going to look, for you know you're going to move without the ball and you're going to find the right man or else you're not going to play. And when the defense was not as good as what we thought and the easy buckets were not as numerous as was hoped, and when Isaiah Collier got hurt, this didn't work and without or I'd say part two of this is a ball dominant. Guard like Isaiah Collier has proven to not be the best for Enfield. I would argue that Jordan McLaughlin was not really a ball dominant. He was much more a facilitator. He didn't need the ball in his hand for you know long periods of time. He kind of just made the offense go without being you know the middle of it the whole time, and that made him the most productive guy. He had the highest BP of anybody in our Enfield.
Speaker 2:So when push comes to shove, you know and we've we talked about this you know what's happened in the last few games. We are coached, we again, the team, now the players are coached to perform and what do we see when we're, when we're having these good starts, it's the ball movement is there. There's not this dribbling and one on one. But as soon as there's a crack in the foundation, we revert to what is the habit and that is too much dribbling, too much one on one ball, not in a ball movement. There's about seven parts to the theory. I apologize, I kind of thought of this when I was swimming today and I didn't have time to kind of work it on a PowerPoint. But that's, that's the this theory Tear it apart.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't think I'm not going to tear it apart necessarily because because it's I think it's mostly correct that this is happening. I think that there's other reasons that are making it happen besides just having the ball dominant point. I think, for example, we have potentially two ball dominant ball handlers in both Collier and Boogie, and it could be that these two guys, with their ability to create, causes a lot of standing around right? The other thing is that opposing defenses really started throwing different looks at us offensively. You saw them playing a lot of zone. You saw some teams really working on pressuring in the half court Up really high away from the basket as much as possible against USC hedging hard, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:And it's it wasn't just that like we weren't moving, it's that we didn't know how to adjust to these types of defenses with these, with this new point guard. He did. You know, isaiah wasn't really I think by the time he wasn't really figuring it out yet about how he was going to move, about how to attack some of these defenses, right, and I think that the the tape on Isaiah was a lot easier for opposing defenses to figure him out than it is for him to figure out these opposing defenses right now. And part of that is because, while Isaiah is a very talented guy, he has some clear limitations to his game, some characteristics to his game, His tendencies, maybe tendencies.
Speaker 1:Yes, and so those are. Those are much easier for opponents to solve than for him to solve what they're throwing at him. They're throwing at him, maybe they throw up a, maybe they throw a longer defender against him who he's never seen, doesn't know how fast he is, doesn't know if he can recover when he goes by him, right. Doesn't know if he's going to get a chase down, block on him or something like that, right. So he's still feeling his way through on those types of things. And you're also right about about Jordan McLaughlin. He was a more traditional point guard and if you actually look at but a couple of things is that when he had, you know he had really good bigs who were really Chamezi, metu and him were fantastic picker or fantastic pick and roll combination and you could tell that J-Mac and his bigs really worked hard at the pick and roll and really getting that down. And by his senior year J-Mac had was just like out of this world his ability to to distribute the ball and that show because he I think he led the Pac-12 and assists and was among the nation's leaders and assists that year. You're not really seeing that. You know Collier tries to do the pick and roll. But other factors include the fact that we we don't have very good bigs to execute these pick and rolls, right, so so that's sort of without the bigs.
Speaker 1:It's almost like there's this ricochet of things right, the, the, the continued bad health of Vince completely put that entire frontline behind right and required more stress on the guys who who weren't still not ready, as as USC probably would have preferred, and so then it became OK, we're just going to have to just rely on our guard player, exterior play and go for the three pointers and and dribble, drive and create and and just try to try to make it work. And that can work to a point. But if you're not shooting well, then you start losing some games or you start, you know, losing games because now you're not shooting well and you don't have good bigs, so right, so it's like a total, it's like a total breakdown. Then you're not playing good defense.
Speaker 1:So I think there's elements of what you're saying that are absolutely correct. It's weird because, like you said, you do see Bob movement earlier, earlier in games or in good movement without the ball, but I think it's more like they're not seeing the payoff and you're not seeing guys show the energy they need to show in these half court sets, both on offensive defense, and it's just one of these things where it's like I think if somebody's playing hard and they see their teammates not playing hard, I don't think it really rubs off very well. So, yeah, I think to some extent, what you're saying is absolutely true.
Speaker 2:Three follow ups on that, one to minor one. You mentioned reliance on perimeter players. I just want to be clear, because this is this podcast is becoming the get Isaiah, the was I had the ball more, not all of the perimeter players as much as well.
Speaker 1:It's getting the ball more and also please shoot more, isaiah. Yeah, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did it too. What, what is it about Vince that? That that he lacks as a as a pick and roll player? Is it just the inexperience?
Speaker 1:A lot of it's inexperience. But also, to be a really good pick and roll player, you've got to have a, you got to have good hands Right, because a lot of times the, the point guard, the ball handler, is going to get you the ball in very tight spots Right and sometimes it's going to be bounced to you where you might have to pick it up below your knee. Sometimes it's going to be a lob, you know, because maybe somebody is between you and the, somebody's between the point guard and the and the big, and so you get a lob, so that it's all about it's having good hands and anticipation and sort of like knowing, like getting a feel for how the guard, the ball handler is going to be, is going to work Right. And so there is never, there is just no connection between Isaiah Collier and Vince and Chuku, because they haven't really practiced much together. Yeah, right, and in fact when you do see good pick and roll on the team, it's almost always done by Boogie and Kobe. Boogie and Kobe are able to execute pick and roll on this team better than Isaiah Collier, and it's not because they're better point guards or better ball handlers than Isaiah, it's just they've had more time in program to play with these bigs and they know these bigs better and the bigs know these guards better, right, and so we saw that a lot earlier in the year where, where they couldn't handle a lot of the passes that Collier had coming at them. Now you can say, well, why didn't they? They should have figured this out over the summer and that's pretty valid, but maybe they weren't.
Speaker 1:You know, when Vince, vince isn't playing until isn't practicing, until, you know, midway through camp or toward the end of camp or whatever it was.
Speaker 1:And when he did come, come back, he really looked really rusty. And then you've got the other bigs who just have also have difficulty with their hands Morgan, who doesn't have great hands and and sort of has some agility issues as far as moving without the ball and rubbing off, of coming off of picks, and and then you've got Kejani Wright who, who I think is understands it and what to do, but he doesn't have like a wide target radius, right, he plays smaller or he seems to play small or he has been until recently, so just not. You know, the guy who might potentially have the best pick and roll potential is is Arrington Page, and but again, he's a freshman who just is, continues and start and stops, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, sputters right. So he, sometimes he looks good and sometimes he looks bad, and it's just one of those things where these types of these types of things require repetition and practice, doing it over and over again, and it's just these guys haven't, these guys haven't been doing it.
Speaker 2:I want you to be a color commentator, because that's I think I can definitely buy that it. I think it lines up clearly with the facts. Much more than well, Collier's hurt and Boogie was hurt. So that's why this team is struggling, because we're spinning our wheels for long before that I what you said is strange and encouraging because it really leaves us no plan B.
Speaker 2:You can't go to the pick and roll because there's just limits there in terms of new guys, the bigs and the skills that are there, and that I think there's a little bit of promise in that and that, OK, after an off season, you know, assuming that all these guys return. You should have a lot more familiarity with that and I think that you will see to your point about when you see. You know, when they're not seeing the payoff, they kind of revert to old habits. Yes, that could actually, you know, precipitate a change in culture and, going back to the, you know, when you're not seeing the payoff, the effort might lag a little bit. I think the other thing that that it's. You know this is just wild and you know he played the game, so he knows. You think it back to the Gonzaga game. Jay Williams said you know there's nobody out here, just keeping everybody else in order. On USC from an accountability standpoint Right.
Speaker 1:Well, that should have been Kobe, I should have been Kobe Johnson and Boogie Ellis. Yep, right, because those are the team captains, those are the guys who are who really get the most minutes. And but I think again, going back to sort of the idea of the bigs versus versus the guards, and I can imagine that some of the seeds for the team's slump could have started with that whole dynamic between guard and big, which is big, isn't converting down low, right Big isn't converting, isn't able to catch passes, or and then sometimes the passes aren't good. Anyway, but the bigs, there's no, there's no. You know, when you have a good, big is a great safety, safety valve for a guard who maybe gets a little over his skis a bit right you get a point guard, who, who dominates the ball or takes a bad shot, and sometimes you can't help it and you're not, you're just going to have to suffer from it.
Speaker 1:But a lot of times you have bigs there to clean it up, right, you have guys to come in and clean up the mess created by the over dribbling or by the bad passes or by you know, loose balls, and you didn't really have a whole lot of that and I imagine, because the bigs were were really problematic and I really wish that.
Speaker 1:I mean it's whistling in the wind right now, but the the focus right now that Kejani Wright is showing the relative improvement by Vincent Iwachukwu over the last you know five or six games where he you know before that he just was unplayable, right, but now he at least is showing some elements of improvement. I think if you maybe started with the bigs as they were, as they are right now, started them against Kansas State, maybe things turn out differently. The light seems to have gone on for a couple of the guys at least as far as effort and really staying, you know, zeroed in on what they need to do. It's not like creating great output or incredible output, but it's it's. Some of these guys are less of a detriment than they were. So, which, which is sometimes you, just like we talked about, you just need to know your strengths and try to maximize those strengths, and that wasn't happening, for, for you know, many of the games in the first, the first part of the year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and despite the improvement, it sounds like the you know the match to what they need to offer. When, when the guards are struggling, which has kind of been a lot recently, it kind of feels like a football team where the quarterback has, he has a tight end that can't get open and the running back can't catch. So there's no kind of option B, it's just okay. Hope somebody you know, hope a wide receiver gets open downfield, or else I don't know.
Speaker 1:And yeah, it's like, it's more like you can't run the ball right. It's like you got, you've got, and it's you can't run the ball because you've got slow running backs right, or you've got sunny bird right. You've got sunny bird on your team and you and you can't. Really you can't run when you, when you want to or when the other team knows you're running.
Speaker 1:So when the other team, when the other team knows that we're trying to, our bigs want to score, our bigs can't score, our bigs can score when the other team doesn't care about our bigs or isn't really worrying about our bigs, right, and and there have been some points and some, you know, just little tiny windows in the last five or six games where our bigs have actually been able to score when they want, when they were, when the other team was trying to stop them, and that's sort of been a little bit tantalizing at times. But it's just. You know, you can't just go off of a couple tantalizing stretches. You need to be able to string all that together and have consistency in this team. There's just nobody, nobody on the.
Speaker 1:The entire team has been consistent all year as far as from a positive production standpoint, I would say everyone has gone through a real stretch of ineptitude, of like I'd say I wouldn't say. I would probably exclude Boogie from that. He has not really. He has not really had a horrible stretch, as far as he might have had a bad game here or there, but he hasn't had a. You know, he hasn't been in a slump all year. So I'll I'll exempt Boogie from this description, but pretty much everybody else Collier, kobe, rodman, sellers, morgan, vince, brani, kejani, hornary, paige every one of them have gone through like multiple, like a string of game had they had. They've had like a string of games where they've either been poured offensively and or poured defensively.
Speaker 2:There's one name you didn't mention in, I think. When we get to, we're nowhere in, we're in really bad situation. We say hey, how about Gardner? You know what about.
Speaker 1:Rodman. He's hurt, he's hurt, he's been hurt, he's, he's, he's not dressing. And and I don't know if their, if the goal is to just redshirt him if possible I don't know whether it's going to be interesting when the, when the season is out, when the season is over, I should say, and we're looking at who's going to come back. We know we're losing Boogie Ellis. We know we're losing DJ Rodman. We know we're losing Isaiah Collier.
Speaker 1:We know we're losing Josh Morgan, right, we're probably going to lose. I suspect we're probably going to lose Brani James. I wouldn't expect him to come back, for whatever reason it is. And then, and then you're looking at some question marks. After that, it was I Sellers. I hope he comes back, but is he now someone who, who is an attractive name on the transfer market? Vince Iwachuku I imagine he'll stay because, in part because his sister is now coming to play play basketball for the women of Troy, kejani Wright seems like the kind of guy who will stick it out in the program because he does seem to be improving incrementally.
Speaker 1:I don't think Harrison Hornery is going anywhere. And then and then it's just a matter of can we? Can we get Eric, can we get Aaron to Pageback and Brandon Gardner back and have them develop, right? And then, and then, of course, enfield's going to have to go into the transfer portal big time, because you're looking at not very many scholarships you could potentially. You got three guys coming in right now, right, and you're losing at least five, right. So so you're and they're, I think they're, and right now they're, they're, only they're not using one of their scholarships. So, so there's going to be. As of now, there's at least at least three more spots available. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So if I might, then you've just kind of set it up perfectly for my question, if we can move along to question time.
Speaker 1:Let's come to the question time. It's like the, the, the prime ministers of England go through question time in the House of the Parliament, so I wonder where one of those those British judge weeks maybe?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we should.
Speaker 2:I should add some sound effects like the and this is not the tough one, this is more of an open end when I was trying to figure out a way to frame this in a tough way. Those make the most interesting dialogues. But getting to the portal, what? What would be the most important things? If you can only get one player through the portal? What are the attributes that you're going to look for? Because I've got a very specific kind of profile in mind here, but I'm curious if you're just going to draw up okay, I want somebody with, like these three attributes. It's got to be one, two, three. What's it going to be? Okay?
Speaker 1:The number one priority in the portal is to get a a good a saw, at least bare minimum a solid point card. Right, because next year the the only ball handlers returning on the team as is are Ozai Sellers and Kobe Johnson. But and and and I assume Kobe Johnson's coming back, right, but you never know, maybe he, maybe he transfers man.
Speaker 1:Right, but just just just because you don't know, you don't know anymore, right, so so, but if he comes back, and, but he's not really he's, he's, he's, he's a wing, really, he's not really a ballhandler. He, he handles the ball, but he's not the guy you want to be handling the ball. Very much Same with those eyes. Sellers, right, these are not, these are not. You would not consider them primary ballhandlers. Uh, bronnie James, also not considered a primary ballhandler and he's probably not come back. Anyway, you do have Trent Perry coming in who, uh, some people don't think he's a very good ballhanderer. I think he's probably good enough as a ballhandler to play point. Well, good enough matters. Is that called the?
Speaker 2:media guide Probably good enough.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, let's put it this way he's a combo guard in other words. So I would say, uh, in the sense that Taj Ede was a combo guard.
Speaker 2:Right and and and not really.
Speaker 1:But you know, taj Ede had some drawbacks as a point right he really wasn't a great facilitator. So Trent Perry is a really good player. The more I see him, the more I like him. He plays against. I've seen him play against the highest level of competition at high school and it and acquit himself very well. Uh, he's not a, he's not a um, a potentially dominant point guard. He's a potentially dominant player in combo guard and a guy who can handle the ball and I'd say, at bare minimum, get you out of a game as a point guard. I think it would be a huge disservice to Trent Perry to hand over the keys to the the vehicle as a true freshman going into the Big 10.
Speaker 1:I think it would be not that he couldn't do it when he's a junior. I think he could do it as a junior. I don't think he could do it as a true freshman.
Speaker 2:Gotcha Okay, Um so yeah.
Speaker 1:So USC will probably honestly need two ball handlers coming in from the portal, at least one point guard and maybe another combo guard, right, another guy like a Tajie, and then and then after that they need, they need a power forward type, right, they need someone who, uh, who can go down there, play deep, play post defense and rebound and maybe protect the rim a bit. Um, that's going to be huge, because if you can have that element next to Vince, it would chukwu next to erranton page. Then you're not putting so much pressure on those guys to produce Um, and then you know you're getting. You know. Then USC's also bringing in uh, two quality shooters, uh to to the program. So in Liam Campbell and Brody Kuzlowski.
Speaker 1:Brody Kuzlowski is a, a forward, so USC's going to have some, some wings at their disposal. There's potentially some, some pretty good shooters coming in and Trent Perry is a very good shooter. So so you've got a reinforcement of shooters and you're bringing back Oziah Sellars, you're bringing back Kobe Johnson, who you hope can get a shooting touchback, and then you're bringing back Harrison Hornery and you're bringing back erranton page. So should have, if you can find, a couple point guards or a couple ball handlers and get one guy down low to help out, then then I think that USC can have a strong rebuilding year next year and then be well situated for the following year. Um, because the class of 25 is a very good one and USC should have a very good class again the next year, the next year.
Speaker 2:Okay, um, you went very practical. I've just, um, you know, feeding upon just the, the, the challenges that we've seen. I did. I have three words here, three phrases. One is backcourt, to your point. The second phrase I have here is the. We need a leader just feeding upon the whole. We just we're not seeing a lot of on-court accountability, so I want a leader that's played in the backcourt. And part three is for a winning program. I can't, you know, we can't take another Drew Peterson that came from a horrible rice team. I need somebody who, like a Tyler Perry, who you know, he just, I think North Texas won 20 games last year, something crazy like that. They made their conference finals. He, you know, that's a program that he basically took to win. We need that kind of person that basically says this is how you win guys.
Speaker 2:Yeah my concerns. If you don't have that, you know we could be looking at a two-year lull here.
Speaker 1:Well, yes, I think that to some extent he's not Tyler Perry but Trent Perry. He's not coming from from college, but he is coming from a very winning program at Harvard Westlake and and he's again, I think they're number 11 team in the country right now. So they're doing very well. They're a he and if you watch him play it's a. It's a. It's a cliche in sports, but he is a winner, right, you watch him.
Speaker 1:I recently I watched him against prolific prep, who is is as talented a team as you'll find in high school basketball, and recently against Columbus, which had the, the Boosier twins, the famous Boosier from Duke, who's two two boys are both high prospects, and the outside Jason Richardson, who's the son of Jason Richardson from Michigan State. This was a really good team. And and recently Trent Perry's team at Harvard Westlake lost a heartbreaker by one point to them. They were definitely out, man, but they, but they, they kept. You know it was a very close game, was my point. He didn't win the game, but he did everything he could to prevent that and he came very close and same with the prolific prep game. On paper, prolific prep should have won by 30, but it was a very close game that that Trent Perry kept really close Okay well, that's that's promising and that's that.
Speaker 2:I think that's gonna be hard as a freshman, although I'll be nice I won't use the term voile to say the opportunity is there for a voice, right? Yeah?
Speaker 1:I think you kind of hope that Kobe Johnson is that guy to be the the vocal leader. Being in his fourth year at this point, he will be like a three-time captain, but you just never know. I mean, for all I know he's the reason why the team isn't doing well. We just won't know that until the year's over, until we see that maybe that there's just some addition by subtraction when it comes to the roster.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, we will find out, okay Do you have any other questions? No, that was the only one that popped to mind this time. I'm gonna make it a little more challenging next time, though.
Speaker 1:Alright, so that means after we've had question time. That means we're now up to Mark's mean minute. What do you have for me?
Speaker 2:I'm gonna just I have the same same same group in in my, in in my side of fire, as has been in past ones. I am so tired of a basketball broadcast not being a basketball broadcast.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:ESPN. The people that are taking their Saturday night to watch this game are watching to watch this game. Yes, if you want a recruiting guy, I've got 17 other places I can go. I don't need you to jam this this being Cardi guy and to take over a whole segment talking about this and that and pretending the game's not going on.
Speaker 1:And to put him on a, and to put him on camera too.
Speaker 2:Yes, what do we need that for? You know why we need that? Because so some NBA hole at ESPN headquarters can put on this resume. Hey, you know what I did? I promoted cross promotion between the ESPN recruiting guru and the ESPN college basketball broadcast and of course he's not gonna notice. You know, make a note of that. He actually made it a much worse broadcast. Yeah, I, I hate that these people they sign up. You know, they sign these contracts to broadcast these games. They don't even believe in them. It's an easy game to broadcast, broadcast at the right way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then just the very fact that you have Bill Walton as your color analyst to begin with is a problem. It's actually one of the reasons why when you go, it's gonna be exciting for the, for the Big 10 next year, because when you go and watch games on CBS and Fox, you get a lot more professionalism I think amazingly even from Fox than you do from from ESPN. And, like I said before, I really hope that Dom and Claim get some work for the Big 10 Network.
Speaker 1:Yeah to be fair, maybe some people, after seeing how USC was playing against UCLA, would have rather watched Paul Paul Biancardi talk to talk to Bill Walton. But but yeah, in general it's, it's a real issue. It's almost like the producer over thinks it and says okay, we're gonna have this whole segment here where we're just gonna do this, this and this and again. And you saw a lot of. You saw a lot of times where you missed chunks of the game. Yeah, are you missed important things like the inbound pass? Because because of this type of thing where you just can't get over in time, so very, very annoying. I totally agree with you.
Speaker 2:It's a basketball game. It's not a blank canvas, for you know, on onto which you're going to make your own impression and make it your basketball game. No, it's a basketball game that we want to see. I'm not interested in your interpretation or your little angle on it. Broadcast it. Don't reinvent it.
Speaker 1:Yes indeed, and on Thursday, february 1st, usc will be taking on Oregon at 7 30 pm in Galen and that game will be shown on ESPN and then on February 3rd, saturday, at Galen 4 pm on the Pac-12 Network. I saw Oregon against Arizona. The Wildcats came to play up in Eugene and beat the Ducks, I think by 9, but they were ahead, I think by as many as 18 at some point in the game. Oregon has in Folly Dante back, they have Nate Biddle back and maybe it's one of those situations where whatever they had going was going well, but that they're still trying to figure out how to incorporate these new bigs. They are playing both Biddle and and Dante together. They're starting them both together and I think maybe that was maybe more effective or they thought it would be effective against Arizona.
Speaker 1:But right now Oregon is still overall playing pretty well. They've got Jackson Shellsted, who's very quick point guard. Without Isaiah Collier it's gonna be tough to stop him and then especially when when you don't know what Kobe's gonna show up. And then, of course, kwame Evans has really, I think, sort of continued to develop down, though he sort of reminds me physically of Onyek Okangwu. He's not the defensive shot blocking presence, but he is sort of like the offensive version of Okangwu good three-point shooter, just more refined. But I really like the upside that he that he shows.
Speaker 1:Of course Dante is gonna be very tough to handle for USC. And then Cuisinard is really having up all conference type of year just a really tough player, really good defender, and there's they've got a whole bevy of pretty good defenders. So it's gonna be a really tough game for USC to handle because the Ducks are now tied with Arizona atop the conference and if they want to win the conference they have to beat the last place team, even if it is on the road if I'm looking at at my my power ratings here, oregon actually has the second best offense in conference play, just behind surprisingly Stanford.
Speaker 2:Why will pat myself on the back saying watch out for Stanford coming into the season? Yeah, this is interesting. They actually have a defensive rating that's a touch worse than USC's. I'm wondering how much of that it was playing without Petal and Dante for a while. Maybe they've kind of caught up on that, although maybe also, if you catch, you know, the, the focused version of Arizona, that can wreck your numbers pretty quickly as well yes, absolutely, and they are playing a lot of freshmen, or a lot of young guys too, are they were right?
Speaker 1:so they were playing, they were starting Evans and they they are starting Shellstead yeah so they're probably gonna be potentially a little behind on defense. But now that they have Dante back, you know the potentially improve in that area down low. So gonna be a tough game. And then Oregon State on Saturday. What do you think about Oregon State?
Speaker 2:mark. Well, the good news is they are the only team that is rated behind us in my conference play power ratings. Their defense is significantly behind ours and I've done some home and away splits and seems that the typical team plays about 11% below its average on the road. So you know, to kind of state the obvious here, this is not just our best opportunity here. I I wouldn't be surprised if this is that one game where we I don't know, we're obviously kind of gets away to a five-linked lead and never looks back and wins by 12 exactly.
Speaker 1:I will you know from from your work, from your lips to the God's ears on that one you know the thing is they. Oregon State, of course, is playing pretty well right now.
Speaker 1:They just swept the Arizona schools at home at home and Jordan Pope is playing as well as anybody in the conference right now. He just was named the conferences player of the week, so it definitely will not be a cakewalk, I would think although maybe like what you're saying is, if USC is going to win, they're going to have to get out to such a huge lead that it will appear like a cakewalk if they are to win. But otherwise, another tough battle, just because it's all a mental challenge for this team at this point to not get down on themselves, to not say here we go again when things get bad, and to really dig down and show some pride. And it's unfortunate because really good crowd again for UCLA and they just didn't come to play against the Bruins yeah, and having said that yeah
Speaker 1:on that fine note, is there anything else that you want to add to to this week's podcast? Now that USC is sitting at 8 and 12 and 2 and 7 in conference with 11 games to go right, I think 11 games to go and and then it's onward to the conference check tournament, and you know, usually you can say a lot of times if you can say you never know what's going to happen, but a lot of times you also get teams that just limp into it and are glad to get the season over with, so we'll see what happens. Maybe maybe Isaiah Collier comes back before then and sort of pumps some life into the, into the calculus here. But I'm not gonna make that prediction. I don't think anybody will and I think you just have to wait and see. But right now it doesn't look good yeah well, on that note we'll wrap it up.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the podcast. We'll be back again next week to talk about the Oregon Oregon State Games. We hope you enjoyed the podcast and keep listening, and be sure to check us out on all the social networks and over at USCBasclecom. So, mark, fight on right fight on everyone.