The Dunk City Podcast
USCBasketball.com's Chris Huston, Mark Backstrom and Sky Liam co-host the Dunk City Podcast, the only podcast devoted solely to USC Trojans basketball. Weekly during the season, intermittent during the offseason, the DCP is the "podcast of record" for Trojan hoops, featuring inside information, special guests and expert analysis.
The Dunk City Podcast
Fear and Loathing of Gonzaga in Vegas
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Chris and Mark recap the Trojans' split decision vs. Seton Hall and Oklahoma in San Diego, where USC started launching threes a-plenty. Can Isaiah Collier get control of his turnover problem? They also preview the Eastern Washington game on Wednesday at home in Galen Center and the Gonzaga matchup on Saturday in Las Vegas.
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 wherever you stream podcasts. Look for clips on YouTube and TikTok as well. Please like, follow, listen and review. Contact us at USCBasketball.com@gmail.com.
USC Basketball Analysis and Turnover Concerns
Speaker 1Welcome to the Dunk City podcast . Change direction by backstripping . Here's the final round El Paso , corgi , ellis , and then this show . It is on the Trojan Tundra USC is on to the sweet side . Ok , welcome back to the Dunk City podcast brought to you by USCBasketballcom . I'm Chris Houston here with Mark Baxter . Usc just finished off the Rady Children's Classic in San Diego A split decision with the win over Seton Hall and a last second loss to Oklahoma . Trojan is now four and two and heading back to home where they'll play Eastern Washington on Wednesday at 8 pm in Galen Center , and then on Saturday we'll go back to Vegas for a second time this season to take on the Gonzaga Bulldogs number 11 ranked , I believe right now at the MGM Arena there . So , mark , what are your thoughts on this past weekend ?
Speaker 2The Seton Hall game was fun until it wasn't , as I think we can say the same about Oklahoma . That Oklahoma game would have been really nice to win because , for whatever reason , oklahoma people seem to have an issue with USC people . I'm not sure what that's about , do you ?
Speaker 1I think it goes back to the time that USC played Oklahoma when they had Trey Young , and you know we didn't let them win by enough .
Speaker 2Okay . You know , neva , I think about it , wasn't weren't we on kind of like the evil guy side , to be honest , about Leonard Washington and doing something really untoward to Blake Griffin ? Do you remember that A certain hit below the belt ?
Speaker 1That's right . That's certainly possible .
Speaker 2Maybe that's what it's about .
Speaker 1Maybe , so I think that's it . Let's decide on that .
Speaker 2Okay , all right , sounds good .
Speaker 1Yeah , there are a lot of things I think to like about that game or both games I should say the Seton Hall game and the Oklahoma game and obviously some things to not like just beyond the overall score . But I think that USC played good defense at times . I think that there was an improvement game over game from previous games in the rebounding area among certain players . Certainly there were flashes of better rebounding . It wasn't necessarily consistent over a period of time , but I do think that there is one interesting stat that came out of this game , or I should say of the weekend , and that is that USC has started out the season with six straight games of 20 or more three point attempts in a game . So USC is averaging 22 three point attempts per game . Six straight is the first time that has happened since the 2018 season .
Speaker 1That's the 2017-2018 season , jordan McLaughlin senior year and , what's interesting , two of these games , in fact , the Brown game and the Seton Hall game . Usc had as many threes as twos in those games and overall in the season , usc is now shooting 50% on twos and 36.4% on threes . Now what's interesting is , if you go back and look at previous Enfield teams , the last team that had as many threes in six games was the 2018-2019 USC team with Benny Boatwright , jonah Matthews and Kevin Porter Jr . They had 168 threes in six games . During one stretch , in fact , there was one game where they shot 50 attempts against UCLA , and then they had a . In the seven game stretch , they had 194 three point attempts and over an eight game stretch they went to 212 threes . So or an average of 22.3 .
Speaker 1So we're basically back to this period and if you go back even further in 2017-2018 , which was again McLaughlin senior year , usc had seven straight games with at least 20 plus three pointers in the game . So if USC gets seven , or should say 20 or more , three point attempts against Eastern Washington , then that'll be the most since 2017-2018 . Now , if you want to look at the record for USC for threes per game , that goes back to 1993 when USC averaged 24 threes per game . That had Roddy Chapman , dwayne Hackett , phil Glenn , bert Harris Jr . So right now , usc is at 22 three point attempts per game , which is which brings us back to the early Enfield era when there was a lot more threes in a similar vein , and then it is potentially there is a chance down the road , as we continue , for this to be the most prolific three point shooting team in USC history .
Speaker 2You know it's interesting . You bring that up because one of my takeaways on my notes I had after the Seton Hall game , or actually during the Seton Hall game , was Seton Hall really didn't mess around with the packet in . It seemed like . It seemed like they were very happy to play us straight up man and it at the same time that would . That did open up a lot of the a lot of the perimeter shots for us and we shot what ? 43.5% for the game from three . Interesting how that worked out so nicely . That was one thing I was keeping an eye on . You know , we got those . We got really open looks , even though it wasn't how you and I had kind of talked about it in prior games , or was just the opponent just just , you know , sinking , sinking down and daring us ? It didn't seem like there were daring us so much , or am I ? Did I see a little differently than you did ?
Speaker 1I think you're right . I think we had good ball movement and we made some shots early . So I think that as we started heating up , you know once that once that three point shot was falling , it opened up a lot of things , I thought . And so that's why we opened up a 20 point lead at one point , because really Seton Hall was in a , you know , really had no good way to counter anything we were doing at that point . And so , and then again it was really the turnovers and some some lax , laxity on defense that you know brought them back into the game .
Speaker 2Yeah , it did . And then what's interesting is , even though we did get lacks for the game , we held them to a BPO 136.7 as a team , which is stifling . You know , the first half especially was really , really impressive . But you know one thing I want to look at two later on those notes is it seemed that the defense just was not quite the same in the second half . I want to see if I can dig in on some splits , really on second half , you know , field goal percentage , because it just doesn't seem to be there . And what's weird is I remember last year was a great example that we just really owned the second half in a lot of games . And it's just , it's not . It's not that now every team is different , as they say , but boy , this is a real , real turnaround from what we've seen under Enfield the last few years in terms of , you know , halftime adjustments .
Speaker 1Yeah , I agree , and you know , I think we have to talk about what I think is really the sort of the main reason we dropped the game against Oklahoma , and that is with Isaiah Collier . It's been talked about , it's just right now . He is unfortunately not necessarily the most reliable guardian of the basketball and he brings so much to the table , like in every other area . To some extent , I think you you take , you would take a higher , you would have a higher tolerance for his turnovers than you , than you might typically have for a point guard , for someone who's running your team and handling the ball . So much so I , because , because it's a lot of his turnovers are due to his frenetic pace and energy , and so , yeah , you do want to calm him down . But the question is okay , you have him for a year , you know , can you calm him down in a year ? Can and do you want to calm him down in a year ? How ? So like ? The question is how can we control his turnovers or figure out a way to cut them ? By cutting them by a third would be a nice start If we can limit Collier to three or four turnovers , a game which which wouldn't be good , you know wouldn't be ideal for most point guards , but with him , because he brings other things to the table , I think you tolerate those a little bit more , especially with such a strong backcourt and and you know so many other options .
Speaker 1So I think that this is a real like major priority for this staff is to try to figure out how , how to get Isaiah under control , especially when it's , you know , really important games . There's going to be a lot of games in the pack 12 on the road where he's . He's up there and it's under a minute and it's a one possession game and and in that situation we want him to be on the court . But we couldn't keep . We couldn't have him on the court at the end of gets Oklahoma just because he wasn't reliable , and they finally actually did bring him back on and then he had that .
Speaker 1He had the turnover , key turnover at the end , and so teams have scouted them , they , they are figuring out ways to get to his spots . There's a little . There's a little spot just past the elbow where where he likes to to really make his cut to the basket , and teams have figured out that if you crowd them there and challenge them there , he has trouble making that move , it sometimes does make a good decision . So so they've scouted it , and USC has got to figure out a way to maybe break that tendency a bit and try to find other ways to use them and , and hopefully in ways that will reduce his turnovers and and give him more of a chance to be a facilitator .
Speaker 2Yeah , it's , it's it's a tricky situation because that is an instinctive position . Yeah , you can't just say , hey , my coaching is be smarter with the ball , or , you know , suddenly gain the experience of two dozen games . You just you can't just put something in a bottle and say , here , now you're good , it's , it's . It's a tough situation and , furthermore , you know this is going back to what I said in the column about you know , when he's a ball dominant player who's a freshman , and yet you know when he is near his best , he's , he's absolutely elite . I'd be very worried or concerned about maybe , you know , screwing with his psyche , if that makes sense .
Speaker 1Yes .
Speaker 2Don't want to instill double . You know what I want to say , not double thinking , but yeah , double thinking is that you're looking for .
Speaker 1I'm not sure , but I know what you mean and I think it's important because to be careful with psychologically , because there's always going to be some games where where even the best point card has five turnovers in the game , right , I'm looking right now at Jordan McLaughlin , who was considered the gold standard . His senior season is considered the gold standard for USC point cards , especially because he had such a high assist to to turnover ratio and part of that was because he had so many assists , you know that year and but he had , he had a gaming . It's middle Tennessee where he had five turnovers . Gaming is Washington . We had five turnovers , right .
Speaker 1So the trickiness of , I think , getting Isaiah up to speed in this area without destroying a psyche is is to say , look , there's just going to , there are going to be games where you're going to have five turnovers . We just can't have it . Every game you know and and and really it's , it's okay Sometimes , if sometimes there's games that you're going to dribble off your foot or you're going to slip and that happens , and I think it's really if you , if he can limit the unforced errors because I think the forced errors over time , just as many of them will turn out to be successful plays where he's trying to do things as unsuccessful . It's the unforced errors stepping out of bounds , slipping or making a bad pass or a lazy pass or something like that . Those are the things I think that that can be reigned in pretty , pretty like substantially , and if you can rein those in , I'm sure that's like 30 to 40% of his total turnovers are probably just self-inflicted type situations .
Speaker 2Yeah , it'd be interesting to see how exactly you do that , do you ? You know structure what you're doing so you don't end up with him with the ball in a really bad spot where his only choice is to fall out of bounds or make a , you know , kind of a Hail Mary to somebody in the corner
Freshman Point Guard Performance Analysis
Speaker 2. That's not going to get a great look . I don't know how you do that when you know not to repeat myself . I think this is this kind of goes back to the instinctive thing , though . Are you going to say hey , don't , don't , don't end up here , don't end up there ?
Speaker 2And you know , is that does that kind of just have him just thinking too much instead of going .
Speaker 1It's and that's just the tough thing about a true freshman point guard .
Speaker 2That's this good . The other thing , too is you know how much of this is just a learning curve and all of a sudden , just do , two pieces just fall in place and you never know that . That's , that's the wonderful excitement , if you will . Um , about a freshman .
Speaker 1Well , I think this is actually look nobody wants . Nobody is more aware that he needs to have fewer turnovers than Isaiah Collier . Isaiah Collier knows that the fewer turnovers he has this season , the more money he makes . Right , it's like direct , it'll be a direct correlation to how much money he makes . Like if , if Isaiah Collier averages five turnovers a game all year , there's going to be a lot of people saying , yeah , I really like this guy as a player , but man , he's , you know , I don't know if he can be a point guard at the NBA because he's just has so many treats so turnover prone , can't try , you know . So , yeah , he , he's aware how that will affect him with his draft status . So he's no one's more motivated than he is to try to fix this situation and it also goes to pride . He's obviously a hard worker and I think that he just has .
Speaker 1This guy is the guy who plays with his heart and he seems like he's got the heart of a lion and I think he plays with great emotion and energy that is fueled by that emotion and it's just the pace is is frenetic and it's just one of those things where he's going to have to settle down , think more strategically and unfortunately , you know it's probably going to . You know hope , hopefully , what it ends up doing is maybe in half court sets , maybe we don't start the you know , initiate the play with him every time . Maybe he's off ball more in some of these half court sets Because most of his turnovers , a lot of his turnover , seem to be in half court sets . And so , and I would rather him , I would rather risk him in the open court with turnovers than than try to stifle him in the open court . But in the half , in the half court , in the half court , you got Boogie Ellis who's actually been been pretty good this year , as far as you know .
Speaker 1Again , when the pressure is not on him , he's he's a good facilitator . He's got a good assist to turnover ratio this year . So you know , he's got 18 assists to eight turnovers . That's pretty solid . Two to one right , more than two to one . So so , yeah , so he's been pretty responsible . There's really not to , you know , but then you know you've got a couple other guys in the team . You know Kobe Johnson is not exactly , you know , not exactly being very small . He's got an eight to 10 ratio . He's got more turnovers than assists . So so , yeah , so there's , there's work to do with a couple of our guards , I think .
Speaker 2Yeah , a few points on , on going back on what you brought up , from , I think , most recent , to to least the thing also to to consider with Boogie , it's not just to turn over to assist , I would also throw in buckets there , because those are times he's actually , you know , scoring without turning it over as well , right .
Speaker 2And by that measure his you know his protection of the basketball is just much better than last year . He was actually underratedly good last year . I just don't think he was much of a creator as kind of we would want . I think also , it might be fair to say , correct me if you feel differently . I think Oklahoma is probably the the the toughest combination that we faced in terms of experience and athleticism . I think Kansas State was just as athletic , but they had a lot of new pieces they were trying to get into place and that was the first game . Oh , you returned a lot and you can just tell that these guys had played together and I think that they were able to do more defensively and they could probably were able to , you know , more easily impose their will than a Kansas state , is that ?
Speaker 1a . Is that a ?
Speaker 2fair assessment .
Speaker 1Yeah , I think so . I thought they're they're a pretty good team . I think they're potentially a top 25 team . I still don't think . I still think we're the better team . I don't think we're playing , I don't think we have . You know , I don't think we're kind of firing at all cylinders right now , but we're getting close . I think we're , overall , raising our level of play . I think we raise our level of play when we play good opponents . So I don't think we played poorly against Oklahoma . I just don't think we played well enough to win and that's disappointing because you know you got some guys in this team that know what it takes to win , but you know it's still early in the season . We've still got some young pieces that are getting up to speed . Let's talk about some of these guys and some of these other players in over the weekend and what we thought of them and looking at their also looking at their BP 100 and and Buscar as well .
Speaker 2Okay .
Speaker 1So Boogie had a had a great , had a great weekend . He , what did he score in the first game ? He scored 20 . Oh gosh , Hold on a second you had 22 .
Speaker 1Yeah , yeah 22 against Seton Hall and he had 16 against Oklahoma . Six of 16 , two of six from three . Four assists , zero turnovers , a steal played pretty well , not his usual explosive game and probably , you know , sort of slowed down a bit down the stretch . Kobe Johnson , I thought , played really well Really to me . You know , we saw him as a freshman and we saw him sort of like take the next step as a sophomore and he is like launching from that plateau he set at the end of a sophomore year and it seems like he's really like at a different level as an offensive player right now . I mean , he's consistently . He's scored 16 points , I think , against both K state and Oklahoma and those are two pretty solid , pretty solid teams . So so he's been legit yeah .
Speaker 2Real quick on Kobe . There too , you know I don't want to just read a series of numbers because it's not ideal podcasting , but I would encourage people if they didn't read the column to look into that . I did a pretty good , you know summary of the splits of Kobe before San Diego and at San Diego and I think it made it so clear he was just a different player , you know , starting with the seat and hall game , to your point . This is just the guy that we were talking about in the offseason , about what we thought he could be , and you were just need to kind of count it as just okay before and after .
Speaker 2Just a different guy . He's basically playing almost at the level that Boogie was last season , which is really something . It's kind of funny too , when you said that Boogie was a little , you know a little slowish or not about quite you know his usual self against Oklahoma . His BP 100 , just against Oklahoma , was 57.1 , which is about what it was for all of last season , Just to show how much he's increased his you know when he's basically having yeah , what was , like you know , an awesome season last year .
Speaker 1Now we're kind of like huh yeah , a little more of the tank , probably Right Like he averaged 17 last year and he got 16 against Oklahoma , so he basically was doing what he did last year , but it feels like he's elevated to the point where that that feels like a disappointing game now .
Speaker 2And yeah , no , no turnovers helps there too .
Speaker 1Sure , yeah . So Boogie and Kobe showed up as usual . This is actually interesting because we talked about how the big three of Boogie and Kobe and Isaiah would probably have 40 points as their floor and they scored 40 to combine 42 in this game . So that's kind of interesting . He was on the low end of their production and that's mostly because of Isaiah really only took , only took eight shots , was not very assertive offensively in this game .
Signs of Improvement in Basketball Performance
Speaker 1One guy I was really happy to see show some signs of life was DJ Rodman . He , you know , he's he's not , he's still not shooting it well overall , but he had a couple threes and they were big threes and he rebranded pretty decently . All right , he rebranded better than he had been . He showed more fire as a rebounder . He , you know , he got five boards in 32 minutes . You know it's not phenomenal , but it's . It's better than what he had been doing . So you're looking for improvement , and so , and then Joshua Morgan had six rebounds in 23 minutes , which is which is pretty good . And then Vince Iwachuku had four rebounds and 14 minutes . So in 37 minutes the center position of Josh and Vincent had 10 rebounds . So that's definitely an improvement over what it had been and it was against a pretty good team and among those 10 boards between the two of them was four offensive boards . So so definitely I think that . And then Kajani Wright came in and he didn't get any boards , but he did . He did come in and get . He scored five , five quick points in , I'm sorry , four points in five minutes .
Speaker 1So and then , and then , finally , I just want to say and I'll let you go over all these guys with your thoughts I thought it was I sellers In San Diego and you talked about this in your column I thought that he Showed some signs of confidence that I think it's gonna pay off . It's gonna start paying off more . I think I trust him more to Start making these shots . And I also think that Vince has started to really make , to get kind of get acclimated again . He's starting to look more natural and normal out there . So these are all good signs . It's unfortunate that it's not happening fast enough for us to win that game , the variable game . But yeah , I think there's there's some hope and hopefully Things will start clicking against Gonzaga and then Auburn .
Speaker 2Yeah , just to go over what your points in order there To add on DJ Rodman , it and I might just be forgetful in my older age here , but it seemed like they made more of a point to try to get him some looks down low . Yeah , and it was probably because of a favorable match favorable , favorable matchup , pardon me and that kind of reminds me of what , you know , we did in a couple lifetimes ago to get blue thin fall and engaged and , you know , get him a couple of looks under the Basket and you know , then those outside shots will start dropping . Yeah , I don't know if the sequencing was the same here , but I like that if the matchup allows for it , as much as I . Where we were saying I think it was the last pod maybe consider using them as a backup perimeter guy . He's he's not a big guy , but he knows what to do when he's got , like you know , the proper matchup when he's , you know , near the basket .
Speaker 1I like that I was impressed by . I was actually impressed by some of his post moves they were . They were Yet some sound , sound footwork down there to get a shot off . So that was . That was good to see .
Speaker 2Yeah , I've just the thing that probably grabs me most of any kind of non scoring , non efficiency metric , as Vince is rebounding , it's just it's off the charts his efficiency .
Speaker 2I think that's gonna get him more minutes
Playing Strategies and Lineup Considerations
Speaker 2. And I I was thinking and especially after how , how the Oklahoma game ended I threw this out as a possibility before the season and we agree that was kind of a dumb idea . But I think , just let me know what you think about this . In very specific circumstances , say , there's like under a minute left , and especially if the shot clock is off , the opponent calls a timeout , they're gonna have a ball . In that case I might want to use I I would actually propose that we do put Vince and Josh in there at the same time .
Speaker 1Well , I think there's been a point this season where they have been at the same time . I can't remember where it was , but I noted it and I might have been against . Maybe it was against See , cal State are at UC Irvine , but there was definitely a time when they were both on the court and I don't recall it turning out very well for what I recall . But yeah , I think certainly if you're looking for rim protection , the great example would have been like that that last play against against Oklahoma . Right , maybe those two guys , but at the same time you also don't want to give up . You know , you , if depends on what , unlike what the other teams Lineup is right if they're putting five guards out there .
Speaker 2Well , yeah , you know correct .
Speaker 1Correct . I don't want then , I don't want , you know , vince having to guard it .
Speaker 2You know a six , three guy on the perimeter If I could help it , so yeah , I think that's kind of what we saw at times it at that Irvine game , because of the injuries and just the odd Combinations we had on the floor .
Speaker 1So I yeah , I can't disagree with you that , but I'm saying no , no , I agree protection .
Speaker 2Just to terminate .
Speaker 1Yeah , yeah , successful . If we're playing a team with some , with some big bigs , and they're actually , like you know , trying to pound it in , then , then yeah yeah absolutely .
Speaker 2To your point . I agree on Kajani . The thing is he , his rebounding is really hit and miss , it seems like , but he's it doesn't . It doesn't necessarily feel like it , because sometimes he , he seems to kind of try to do offense before his feeder under him , or he just he seems to still lack a little confidence , trying to finish unless he's getting in the right spot . He's , you know he's been set up properly . He's . He's very good then , but if the more he has to create , the less effective he is yes .
Speaker 2Yeah , that kind of dirties up his form , if you will . But I think that if you just look at his numbers , he's he's not really turning the ball over . He's finishing at a nice rate . His BPO in the last few games is basically exactly what you would want out of a big man coming off the bench . It's , it's no , it's not a . Hey , let's see how many minutes we can steal with this guy . It's alright , let's see what he can do against the other teams . Number twos yeah , it's a very different dynamic .
Speaker 1Well , he definitely looked . I thought he definitely had some Some good looks against Seton Hall . He had , you know , he had three points , got a I'm sorry , I got three , got three , three rebounds as well , and so he did it in five minutes . Again , you're looking at a very brief time , but I thought he showed Some some good work against Seton Hall . So Right now he seems to be the odd man out , as far as amongst him and erranton page Seem to be the odd man out , it seems to be right now the three-man rotation of Josh Morgan , vincent and Hor Harrison . Hornery are the three main guys and then Kajani and Paige . Just , I think we put them in there and see what , see what we can get out of them , and and then it's , you know , that determines how much longer they play .
Speaker 2Yeah , agree that that seems like a fair assessment to me .
Speaker 2And then finally , ozaia I , I Think when you see a and we kind of forget this Because we've not had , how do I say this we tend to focus on on the big freshman , like an Isaiah Collier , and it's a different learning curve when you have a , just , you're more kind of typical Nice recruit , like sellers , I think there's there's kind of the first year is almost a , you know , getting your your feet wet , and sometime in their second season there's more of a kind of a price discovery .
Speaker 2Like you see , there was wild swings of volatility of what he had this awesome game against Bakersfield than that horrible game against Irvine , and then it just it settled down since and you're gonna have variants in your play , no matter what , but you know , and everybody kind of a bad game . But I just I think that it just feels like you're getting more of a sure thing now and it's not up you know 100% , but it just seems like you have , we have a better idea now what we're gonna get from him for three games in a row now Coming off the bench , which is really what we were talking about in the summer . This is one of those questions that we wanted answers answered and it took a while . But you know I'm very comfortable now that that shot against Seton Hall is just that . That was just stones .
Speaker 1I mean it was , yeah , but it and his and his makes against Seton Hall we're also just like good-looking shots and he looked confident doing it . So he seems to be on the verge of , you know , really Just being a key guy being , you know , being the first , first guard off the bench right and and actually doing something with this time . So you only got , he got . You only got a five minutes against Oklahoma , but you get 12 minutes against Seton Hall and and that was because he came in and did some stuff five points to rebounds , two or three shooting , one of two from three . So Every little , every little sign that you can see of improvement , it's good to grasp it and try to make , make what you can of it .
Hornery and Mobley's Playing Time
Speaker 1Some of our other guys Harrison Hornery , I think is Turning out to be like he's . He's playing some solid minutes . He's not like being a big-time Score . He's kind of just inconsistent on the rebounds , but he did get nine against Was it nine against Brown , I think ? And then I think he ended up with Just a couple rebounds against Oklahoma . So he's not really like Scoring a lot , not really give a lot of rebounds , but he's playing pretty . He's playing pretty decent defense . He's getting . He's getting some blocks , getting some steals . He had a lot of blocks against Seton Hall and so he's just he's just doing some , some positive things out there , but he looks like he's basically the Josiah sellers of the bigs right now .
Speaker 2Yeah , very fair . I it's interesting the way he's played the last few games . My one of my first thoughts would be maybe he just is more effective with with fewer minutes , but it was so good against Irvine in 33 minutes , so I don't . I don't know what it just it's , maybe that's just , you know , some of that natural variants .
Speaker 1Yeah , well , he's averaging 20 minutes a game this year , so boogie's averaging 35 , isaiah's averaging 31 and it's interesting you can actually see the way Isaiah's managed . He's been coming out at the right at the under 15 timeout , I think it's , or he always comes out at like around 14 minutes , takes his first break and and I think that's kind of like when they you know they want to see it from that point onward how the rotation is going to go , but he takes , he . They have planned breaks for him In the game and it's interesting how he's not they're not trying to overload him too much , right ? Because he is playing 30.8 minutes a game , which isn't , you know , it's not as high as it could be .
Speaker 2Yeah , what kind of on along those lines . I think you only had 28 against Oklahoma . I I'd venture to guess that if he stays healthy , that that's probably gonna be the season low .
Speaker 1Yeah .
Speaker 2It just , you know . I mean , you just recall the Irvine game , you know , when he went out , it was just really hold your breath time and again . You know , let's we hope that we're not without Kobe and boogie as well , but yeah , it's you know , for the turnovers that we've had to endure , it's it's better with him than without him right ?
Speaker 1Well , hopefully , and then , you know , looking head to this game against Eastern Washington on Wednesday . This will be the first , the first like quote-unquote Gimme game , with everybody healthy , that that USC has played .
Speaker 1That's true , right . So it's gonna be , it's gonna be nice , because this is just the kind of game where you can , you can actually , where Isaiah can actually just work on his turnovers right , just work on his turnovers , work on on , you know , playing as full speed as he can without , without getting turnovers . And this is a Eastern Washington team . Who's who's star player , or the player that everyone knows , is Jake Kymann , who was a teammate of Max Aguilipolo in high school and he was at UCLA and I think this is his third stop now . I think he was at Wyoming before , so now he's at Eastern Washington and , yeah , this should be . They've already played Utah and Stanford and and they got hammered in both of those games . So this should be a . This should be a real romp for USC and hopefully a chance for for some guys to get some really good minutes .
Anticipating the USC vs Gonzaga Game
Speaker 2Yeah , kind of to that point in terms of you know , trying to get Isaiah a little , just you know , back on track , do you try to get him to work on those things that he needs to work on ? I mean I don't know what value there is improving that he can get past An Eastern Washington guard again and again and again . I mean we kind of know that's just a given , is it not ?
Speaker 1Yeah , no , I think so , but you still , but maybe he's , maybe he's working on on Just different different input , inlet passes and yeah you know , maybe he's just working on on getting into the post , maybe he's working on going to his left instead of to his right , yeah , and and so you know it's like I . Like I said I guess this the Cal State Bakersfield game , that was not full strength . You see , irvine was not full strength and he really had a lot of pressure on him in that game . And Kansas State was , you know , not the kind of game where , where you could Mess around too much , right ? So yeah it's interesting .
Speaker 1So this really is going to be the first game against a lesser opponent when everyone with the teams have full strength . So , and this will be , I think , now , three games in a row where the team has been at full strength , so we should start to see some Improvements start to accrue , I think , overall , and hopefully it starts coming forth just in time for the Gonzaga Bulldogs on Saturday . Yeah , what do you think about Gonzaga ?
Speaker 2You know , coming into the season , I thought , yeah , they've . I thought they had lost a lot . I thought that they would really miss Drew Timmy . From a metric standpoint , this team is , I don't want to say frightening , but they're they're going to be tough to deal with . They have , you know , they have two players one once , brandon Brayton Huff . He's just under 60 , bpo , 59.8 , which is nuts . Yeah . And then Anton Watson is a 65.2 , which is a joke . You , I see that . I think , okay , this is a guy that's coming off the bench and just had a good run against , like you know , southern Mississippi or something . But no , if you saw him against UCLA which is the only time I've seen the scene it seemed like he couldn't miss . Yeah , I don't know if that's typical of him . Is that ? I don't remember him from last season ? Is that kind of his game ? Yeah , he's scoring a will yeah .
Speaker 1I mean he's shooting 69% this year so far and he's shooting 73% from two-point range and it's not like he's shooting a lot of . He's shooting 5% from three , but he's not really . He's only shooting 1.6 attempts per game . Incredibly he's . He's shooting 47% from the free throw line , so that's kind of interesting . So anyways , averaging 17 and 8 and he doesn't get , doesn't turn it over much , doesn't foul much . So he's a really good player and he's gonna be a challenge . He likes to board and Pretty a passer to .
Speaker 1And then Graham Ike he's a transfer from Wyoming , who's another kind of a grinder . He's gonna again . He's gonna be a guy , is gonna give us some fits Because he's really kind of . He's kind of too big for , he's too big and strong for Rodman . So so I guess we're gonna have to try to put Put the key Johnny on him . I think a Johnny's probably the guy who matches up best with him . And you know , watson Probably gonna have to put Kobe on him Right . And then , and then you know , nolan Hickman , who's he's off guard . He's pretty good to . He's averaging almost 14 points a game . So , but he's smaller so Kobe can take him . And then you know I'm Ryan Nemhard , who's a pretty solid player came over from Creighton . You know , I think that's just probably a straight-up Matchup for Isaiah . But Braden Huff , that'll be . That'll be up to , that'll be up to . So , joshua Morgan , to try to try to keep him a check .
Speaker 2Yeah , what's interesting to knit nem hard . His BP , oh 100 on the season , is only 44.1 , which is surprising , I .
Speaker 1Early , it's early . Okay , he's gonna round and I , I imagine he's gonna round into shape a bit , you know . Yeah , he's not he's not an elite elite point guard but but he's pretty good point guard .
Speaker 2Is he the brother of the that was there ?
Speaker 1Yeah , the one that was there and he transferred over . So and they got some pretty good guys up the bench too . There's Ben Greg , who's a 610 forward , yet dusty Stromer , who's from Norah , name Sherman Oaks . He's a freshman kind of a rangy guy . He's averaging five points of five boards off the bench . So they are a , like you said , deep team . Looks like they go about seven or eight deep Guys who are in the rotation who can play . So yeah , it's gonna be , it's gonna be a challenge , but but we've got some good players too . So we do , we do and we're gonna have to . You know , there they like to , they like to Keep up the tempo and score and score it fast and and they're always through their great passing team and so you know , but they're not unbeatable and certainly USC is , you know , one of the More talented teams . They're gonna play . So so I think , so I think , probably Just on paper you got to give Gonzaga the edge , but but certainly USC has a solid chance to win .
Speaker 2Yeah , a few things that stand out to me too . As a team they do . They do take care of the ball . They're trying to turn over . Percentage is only 12.5 percent On the season , which is really low . They have four guys that are rebounding at 11 or higher rebounds for 40 minutes , so that'll be a challenge for us , since we've been kind of up and down rebounding . Interesting for a Gonzaga team , they're only shooting 30.3 percent from three .
Speaker 2Yeah , they're not good , they're not yeah so maybe we can take advantage of that and maybe just kind of , you know , focus a little bit more rebounding than perimeter defense , whatever you know when we can get it gain an advantage in that in that venue .
Speaker 1Yeah , but they are a 58 percent , 2.2 Point percentage team , 2.0 or team . So they they are as usual that they get a lot of great looks at the basket , a lot of points in the paint . They're not a good free-thrash a team . They're always shooting 63 , 63.7 percent and surprisingly , they're not get . They're not a so far . They're not a team that gets a lot of assists . They only have 15 assists per game . They've historically I should say the last few years have been a very high assist rate team . They're really distributed the ball a lot . So this is a pretty good Gonzaga team that has a lot of characteristics of this , these recent Gonzaga teams , especially with their efficiency scoring Close to the basket . But there's also some areas that are surprisingly low For what Gonzaga is used to .
Speaker 2Yeah , they just they do not look at all this like last year's team . Like I said with you know , timmy's post game was such a dominant theme of that program the last few years and . It's . You know , they do have big guys that can score , but it just doesn't . They didn't look the same from what I saw against UCLA , that's a fair characterization .
Speaker 1Yeah , yeah . And also they don't have like Risbert , they don't have like the deadly cold shooter from outside .
Speaker 1Yeah and they don't really have the the athletic freak like they had with Suggs a few years back as well . But yeah , there should be an interesting game . Kind of a bummer that there that these games are in Vegas . Obviously it was . It was set up to take advantage of USC fans being in Vegas for the pack to help title game . I'm sure that was the the intention . But yeah , it's a should be interesting game . Do you have any thoughts on on what's gonna happen ?
Speaker 2I it's gonna come down to like I , like I said in the column , how much can we make the defensive rebounding a part of our you know collective existence as a team ? Yeah , you know , gonzaga is getting 42 point 42% of the potential offensive rebounds , which is just nuts , yeah , and it goes back to the day of the four great rebounders . If we , if we can I think that that will probably determine whether we win the game is how well we we rebound on the defensive end .
Speaker 1Mm-hmm .
Speaker 1Yeah , I think that's big , and I also think you know , I'm curious to see how , how much Isaiah Collier can limit his turnovers .
Speaker 1That's gonna be a big factor , because the fewer turnovers he has , the more effective he is right , and so the more effective he is , the more he has a chance to to really create great matchup problems with Gonzaga .
Speaker 1Because if Collier , boogie and Kobe are all firing on all cylinders in this game , then USC is gonna win the game . Yep , if all three of those guys are firing , they're gonna win the game , but Gonzaga is not dumb . They're gonna try to Do the things that people have been doing to slow Collier down and so , and so We'll see what USC has as a counter for that , because they got to start getting some counters for for when , for when that happens , and so you know . The other thing is that it's also the end of November , which means that , based on reports , it should be time for Brani James to get his checkup and If the checkup goes well , he will return to practice , which means , if I had to guess , a couple weeks of practice , he's probably gonna get into a game , and if I had to look at the schedule , we could probably target his appearance , mmm .
Speaker 2One game in mind , and probably one after you probably at probably at Auburn I was gonna say probably at Alabama State . I don't know , I'm into the fire at all at Auburn .
Speaker 1Right , but it would also boy talk about . Talk about getting eyeballs on that game . Yeah , I know Sunday , sunday morning .
Speaker 2Oh you and well , I didn't know .
Speaker 1We were in the business of doing favors for Auburn's gate , but well , no , but I just well , they're gonna , they're gonna sell out regardless . But but I just meant , I just meant , as far as you know , putting a debuting at Alabama State . I think the sooner the better . Obviously , if you can get him at Long Beach , that'd be great . But but I think , yeah , why not ? Why not throw him into the mix at Auburn ? Because that's just another Question mark , for them will hear won't he play ? Do we have to account for him ?
Speaker 2And if he's the kind of guy who's who's .
Speaker 1If he can just play a few minutes and do some spot-ups , that could help us .
Speaker 2You know who would really root for it to be one more game , one game after , and emphatically so would be ESPN plus .
Speaker 1Yes that's a good point . Yeah , are the historically back universities and colleges ? Yeah , that would be actually be a good , good way to do it .
Speaker 2Yeah , mistake .
Speaker 1Because then you know , nine days later you have another , you have nine day break until you play at Oregon and Certainly , it looks like at this stage , brody's not going to make his debut in the Galen Center until January 3rd versus California . It's possible that they just that's his first game as well . So we shall see yep .
Speaker 1All right , well , that should do it for a Dunk City podcast . Thanks everybody for listening . We hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and Get out there , support the Trojans Eastern Washington on Wednesday , gonzaga on Saturday , and we'll see you at the website uscbasketballcom where we'll be talking about it and Discussing All the ins and outs of USC basketball . So , on behalf of myself , chris Houston and Mark you ready to be ready to go , mark ?
Speaker 2I am Alright on everyone .
Speaker 1Bye , don't everybody ? Talk to you soon . The Dunk City podcast is the podcast of record for USC basketball , brought to you by USC basketballcom . We're on all streaming platforms Spotify , apple music , google play . Check them all out , or just go to USC basketball comm and listen to it there .
