Speaker 2: 0:23

Welcome to the Dunk City Podcast All right.

Speaker 1: 0:27

welcome back to the Dunk City Podcast brought to you by uscbasketballcom. Chris Houston, here with Mark Backstrom and Sky Liam.

Speaker 3: 0:36

How's it going, boys, going very well, thank you.

Speaker 1: 0:38

Very good, very good. Usc is now 5-1 following wins over San Jose State in Grambling. Neither of the games were necessarily very pretty to watch, but somehow they ended up being double-digit wins nonetheless 82-68 over San Jose State, 80-69 over Grambling. The Trojans take on St Mary's on Thursday, thanksgiving, daygiving day, at 9 pm eastern, 6 pm pacific time, at accresure over in palm springs, palm desert area and um, and then, if they, depending on who, if they win the game or not, they'll play either, uh, arizona state or who's the other one? New mexico, new mexico, right, right, right, okay. So beat ucla already this year? Yeah, who did Arizona State? Or who's the other one? New Mexico, new Mexico, right, right, right, okay. Who beat UCLA already this year? Yeah, who did beat UCLA? So interesting.

Speaker 1: 1:32

This is going to be a bit of a step up in competition compared to what USC has been facing the last couple weeks. It could be that a step up is one of those things that gets the team to prepare better or plays better. Maybe they're teams that play, maybe this team is a team that plays to the level of competition who knows? But it will be a challenge. Let's talk about these last two games. Last time we were here on the podcast. Usc lost to Cal only loss of the season for the Trojans so far and also had beaten UT Arlington another close game 98-95. What do you guys think, what are your thoughts after these two games against San Jose State and Grambling? Who wants to go first?

Speaker 2: 2:23

Well, you know it's kind of more of the same. In some ways. I will say that the grambling game was a little encouraging. It's kind of hard to you know gauge against a team. Like a lot of these teams that USC has been playing With the talent level it's not necessarily at a Power 5 level. Although they had a transfer from the Final Four NC State team, they've been playing a lot of Power 5 teams pre-conference.

Speaker 1: 2:54

So it just kind of felt like.

Speaker 2: 2:56

USC figured it out a little bit towards the end of that game, which was nice and any time you have guys going off from three. It's going to make it look like you figured something out which is nice, and that's been part of the game plan all along, so that's kind of just clicking now and we'll see if that transfers over. They certainly looked a lot better at the end of that game than through the beginning.

Speaker 1: 3:18

Yeah, that seems to be a theme a bit Right now. We are taking the other team's best punch early on. Specifically, there seems to be one guy who goes off for each team. I think you look through the schedule so far. I mean you've got UT Arlington had a guy, and San Jose State had a guy, Grambling had a guy, especially from three-point land, just really keeping the other team close for a while, but then USC seems to figure it out and kind of pull away at the end. Mark, what's your take on these last two games?

Speaker 3: 3:52

Yeah, I'm going to put a little bit of maybe extra faith than I should into what I think it was. Actually. Coach Musso told us that he really does a lot of work specifically into what kind of teams to schedule in the non-conference. So I remember he made very specific points about we want to play two teams that play zone so we can practice our zone offense, that kind of thing. So you know, I keep on hearing comments about how Grambling is going to be good in their conference and UTA is going to be good in their conference and so on.

Speaker 3: 4:26

I have no reason to disbelieve that, but I'm getting a little nervous about how many eggs I'm putting in that one. This team is going to be great in their lower-level conference. That's the first thing that concerns me. The other thing that's really weird and I defer to you all because you guys know X's and O's better than me it seems just from a, you know, it seems like we're figuring out on defense in the second halves of these games and I don't know if it's just whoever's just kind of like. You know, been presented the voucher to light us up for three. You know, three after three, after three after three in the first half, just gets tired of hitting so many in a row and just kind of luck runs out or he regresses. But are we actually changing something? On the defensive end? It looked like we played a lot more zone in the second half of the most recent game. But are you guys seeing that, or is that just kind of like you know, in-game regression as much as anything?

Speaker 1: 5:12

I think I think there's an element of that. I definitely, I think you're. You're right about our our zone offense struggled a lot against against Grambling for sure, especially early in the half court set Right, especially early in the half court set Right, and we were struggling to get quality shots, clean passes, we were struggling to find cutters and find open men, and I think that what we're seeing is USC really just kind of still figuring out, like who is going to be the most. You know the consistent guys Um, we saw Chibuzo Abo come back after you know he has been struggling and now he comes back this week and has two, two huge games, really made sure that we won both games and, in a sense, if not for him, we probably, maybe, we probably, maybe we lose those games, um, but but then you have other guys who've sort of taken a step back compared to how they'd been playing, and then other guys who who seem to um step forward, depending on the matchup right.

Speaker 1: 6:15

So you got someone like josh cohen who, who seems to be fairly unstoppable on the down in the blocks against these sort of mid-major teams, because he has that unorthodox style which enables him to get a shot off, but he doesn't seem to be able to play large chunks of the game and this seems to be an issue. So I think I don't really understand what the what the issue was with not starting um Desmond Claude in the last game. If it was, uh, some kind of motivational tactic, it didn't really seem to. I know Claude had a pretty solid game but, uh, it really took a while for the team to gel in the game and to figure out, uh, how to pull away.

Speaker 2: 7:03

And it could just be like you know, we're still collecting data and all these guys we still don't know what the best uh lineups are, and it could just be that the lineups just depend on who we're playing and and how they're feeling that day after the san jose state game, mus said, uh, you know he wasn't happy with the defense, and he said that you know he wasn't happy with the defense and he said that you know there may be some lineup changes and some of them may surprise you.

Speaker 2: 7:33

He said that to the press and, yeah, I think you know bringing Claude off the bench is another one of those. I think there was a couple games where he wasn't really satisfied with Claude's defense and you know it worked well for Abbo. So far, I think, and I really think it's just kind of taking the pressure off some of these guys. I mean, you have St Thomas, who I imagine we'll get into in short order, being a starting point guard, uh, for the first time in his career as like a 60 guy claude, being you're kind of your point guard, starter b uh for the first time ever and uh, it's a lot of pressure.

Speaker 1: 8:14

Abo, coming back home to southern california playing at the high major level after two years at boise state's a lot of pressure yeah, yeah, and you know, uh uh, St Thomas, playing point in a game where we're we're having to go up against the zone was probably even more of an issue, right, Because playing zone offenses is a little bit harder than than than not, right, it's a little bit harder than just uh uh, being a six, eight point guard and backing guys down and just kind of seeing over guys and making plays off of that which is, you know, happens a lot with. St Thomas is able to to take advantage of his size and his passing ability. But, yeah, it's. It's interesting like how much he's been affected by this, this having to play a point guard. I am kind of intrigued by seeing a little bit more Clark Slacker, uh, point guard. I am kind of intrigued by seeing a little bit more Clark Slacker. I thought he showed some signs of of feeling looking more comfortable out there, um, in the game and and I'd like to see him at least get a few minutes game potentially of taking some of the pressure off those guys at point uh market.

Speaker 1: 9:22

You have the numbers, numbers uh, for the team this year. Uh, so far, what? What are your numbers showing? Uh about what, what the team looks like? So?

Speaker 3: 9:31

far. Yeah, specific to the grambling state game, um, I think you make a great point about, uh, you know somebody who's sort of learning the point guard position, running the offense against his own defense. Thomas's turnover percentage was 32%, which is just I don't know. At that point I think it's not to give up on him, but you know, I'd probably spoon feed him rather than force feed him at the point guard position. When you're getting that.

Speaker 3: 10:01

It seems like the scouting report, until proven otherwise, is just zone us and hope that basically we do exactly what we did on Sunday. It seemed like we were really obliging and making a lot of those passes that you don't want to make against a zone. It's too tough. Earlier in the year it seemed like we were running good zone offense. We were able to get Nolan in that spot right on the free throw line, get a nice entry pass and he just knows how to finish that so well. You know, the thing he doesn't do that that's been kind of a source of frustration is he gets the ball in the paint and he doesn't hurry or panic or or or, just you know soil himself. He's so good at just playing other composure when he's in position, so he's a perfect guy to do that. But something just I don't want to blame Thomas entirely.

Speaker 1: 10:55

I don't know, if there was a wrinkle in the Grambling State zone defense.

Speaker 3: 10:58

But boy, it looked like we were going against just an absolute fiendish defense, which they might be a good team, but I don't think they were that good. I think we were just doing them a lot of favors in how we were trying to attack that zone.

Speaker 1: 11:07

Yeah, and I think what ultimately happened was to break a zone. You need zone breakers, you need guys who can shoot, and what ultimately happened was Abo hit four three-pointers in the second half and that kind of helped, if you notice. It kind of helped loosen things up a because they had to come out a little bit more on him and so that created a lot more opportunities. But you have to have a lot of movement in the zone. You got to be whipping it around, you got to have good passing and still it's a work in progress.

Speaker 1: 11:39

This team and I think one thing we really I think the great thing is, I think we can be clear-eyed about what this team has to offer. Like, there's a lot of these guys are are here for one year and you know they're very experienced and all of them have experienced scoring. But I think it's it's pretty much established by now, but this is probably not going to be a 40 minutes of hell defensive team. Right, this is. This is going to be a team that can play some defense and spurts, but you were probably going to see very rare opportunities where they're playing at high levels on both ends of the court. They're probably going to be either doing one or the other, and so that's probably going to be an issue all season long, I would say.

Speaker 2: 12:32

And I think some of that just has to do with the amount of turnover. Like there's literally not a single player on the team who can captain the defense, from the point of experience yeah, every single guy is learning the defense and and the players spoke to that in the media Q&A afterwards and you can just watch the game you can see that they're missing rotations sometimes. You know the effort is there, but I do feel like sometimes, when they really want to lock down hard, you do see a difference.

Speaker 1: 13:03

Oh, absolutely they can do it, but they can't. And you would think that with the depth maybe they could sustain it, but they have a hard time sustaining for more than I would say, for more than five minutes at a time, really intense defense.

Speaker 3: 13:20

Yeah it seems more like, instead of 40 minutes of hell, it's about 18 minutes of frustration is about how. I'd gauge it right now, yeah.

Speaker 1: 13:28

Yeah, cause that's about, you know, not quite half the game. It takes time. It takes time for for the team to find itself during these games. So, yeah, I would say that we're kind of getting a better picture of who this team is. I think we're going to have a much clearer picture after this coming up, these coming up games over Thanksgiving in Palm Springs, arizona State is potentially a really tough game, and so is St Mary's. St Mary's is a heck of a rebounding team. So on the one hand, this might be a real issue with us from, you know, cause that's our weakness, but I thought that there would be problems against Gonzaga too. So maybe this is the kind of team that that really rises to the occasion. What do you guys, looking ahead to this, this, these weekends games, what do you see as as something to look for?

Speaker 2: 14:24

So I'm I am cautiously excited for the St Mary's game because there's like a solid four days of prep these guys are going to be doing. And last time we really saw kind of that chunk of time was the Gonzaga game and must have them scouted really well and I think all of us were happy with the results. Now, looking back on that game, I think maybe some of us didn't realize at the time that a huge advantage USC had was the fact that there was literally zero film on the team.

Speaker 2: 14:59

This is the same principle you see when, like the benched quarterback, comes in and totally lights it up his first game, everybody says wow, why isn't this guy starting? And then the next couple games he comes back down to earth.

Speaker 1: 15:15

I think USC benefited from that. Great point.

Speaker 2: 15:20

But also having been in that practice. That was the pre-Gonzaga practice.

Speaker 2: 15:24

I saw how hard and how focused they were preparing. And you can see if you go on Instagram, you see some of these videos where Mus has these very entertaining pregame speeches, like little skits practically. And you know, if you, they had one from the Gonzaga game and he was like what's the key to this and the key to that? And all the players were shouting out and they were using kind of some code names and then maybe it was the idaho state game. He's like and what's the key to, you know, meeting idaho state, and I think the key was energy, which is pretty, which is great, you know, it's true, but it's also the scout was different, I think energy, effort and enthusiasm yeah exactly.

Speaker 2: 16:04

Um. So that's not to take anything away from their prep, but with that time and focus, hopefully they can really pinpoint exactly what they're going to take away.

Speaker 1: 16:14

Yeah, mark, looking at your updated metrics, to me it looks like your top five at Buscar seem to be our best starting five Desmond Claude, josh Cohen, terrence Williams, tabuzo Abo and Matt Lohling. Do you think that's probably our best starting five? Desmond claude, josh cohen, terrence williams to buzo abo and matt lowling. Do you think that's probably our best starting five right now? You're not going to start saint thomas.

Speaker 3: 16:35

well, I'm asking you, wow, um I right when I say right now, right I I want be given his upside. I want him to play through this. I don't know if I'd bench him. The other thing that's so interesting is you kind of mentioned this. Cohen is such a contextual player. You know what was that? One game where he was just almost unplayable because he was just getting crushed on the defensive end.

Speaker 3: 17:02

But you know, he was so useful in this last game he seemed to be weirdly like the antidote to the zone defense. He was the one guy we could get it into. And then he just goes, 45-year-old guy, MCA game and just everything goes in. So I'd say Claude definitely would start, terrence Williams would definitely start. Williams is by far the most efficient player. I might kind of go interchangeably Cohen and Abo, just depending on the matchup, for whatever reason. I don't know if it's just a coincidence, but you know God, it's nice to have a guy off the bench like Abo and I don't know if he's playing better because of that or if it's just a coincidence. But man, 20 points off the bench or whatever he's had these last two games, that is a nice luxury to have.

Speaker 1: 17:52

Well, I think with him, we know he's a good shooter. I think it was just a matter of he wasn't going to tank it all year long, he wasn't going to come around, and he started out pretty weak. But now, just in these two games now, he's up to almost 37% three-point right. So I think he was in the 20s before these two games. Now he's at 37. Terrence Williams at 41. But other than that, we're not being very consistent from three-point.

Speaker 1: 18:23

Josh Cohen is one for four, desmond Claude's three of 11. Wesley Yates is six of 20. And St Thomas is six for four. Desmond Claude's three of 11. Wesley Yates is six of 20. And St Thomas is six of 22. Now, lots of these St Thomas shots seem to be in and out, especially the ones that are closer to the rim, and maybe some of these start falling for him. And kind of like what you said, though, before, about taking the pressure off, I thought giving saint thomas a little break and coming in, uh, as the sixth man might be a good thing to do for this for this one game yeah, the, the on the three pointers that you just mentioned.

Speaker 3: 18:56

You know, yates, you're, you're gonna have your freshman ups and downs, so who knows what that'll be at the end of the season, but there will be a roller coaster getting there. You know, three pointers, three-pointers are not really Cohen's forte, so I'm not worried about that. You might remember, you know, when I kind of did the scouting on Claude, like the box score scouting, I said, boy, for a guy who only shoots 26%, he takes a lot of three-pointers and I think you're looking at the, you're open for a reason kind of situation here. He takes a lot of three pointers and I I think you're looking at that, you're open for a reason kind of situation here. Yeah, and I, I really, you know, I want him to be completely, completely wide open or just absolute end of the shot clock.

Speaker 1: 19:33

Yeah, he's not taking too many, he's only taking 11, so yeah, um, and I just I don't know.

Speaker 3: 19:39

Just I really want it to be kind of like almost you have to, rather than you want to with him because he's so good Boy. He just he has almost who does he look like? Like an Alex English or George Griffin? Like, once he gets in, he has kind of a weird angular game of how he puts his elbow ahead of his, of his hands. He's really good at protecting the ball when he gets in the paint. Yeah, that's his strength.

Speaker 1: 20:02

He plays through contact for sure. And yeah, one one guy I yeah, he plays through contact for sure. And one guy I want to run this by you guys. I really think that I know Wesley Yates is a freshman or sophomore or however you want to rank it, but I feel like his upside is I think he does something, at least you know, in these types of games where they're playing a zone. Maybe it was just harder on him in that zone offense because he is so young, but I think by now he's shown enough consistency in his offensive ability to merit some more minutes, I think, Because I think there's upside down the road later on this season might just be too much to overlook. What do you guys think about that?

Speaker 2: 20:48

I mean he's, he's averaging 19 minutes a game. For a guy who's never played college basketball, it's not terrible. Uh, and I, I felt like yeah you know he played 27 minutes against San Jose state. It's the. The rotations have been really interesting. You know we've seen almost zero minutes from Slacker until last night.

Speaker 1: 21:08

And.

Speaker 2: 21:08

I think it kind of feels like right now the choice for us has been Yates or Slacker. With you know the choice, the decision going to Yates.

Speaker 1: 21:19

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 21:21

I think, yeah, definitely. There's just so many guys on this team where they bring something positive and then they have kind of a weak point. And it's like which weak point do you choose?

Speaker 1: 21:34

Yeah, and Clark Slackard has won for 11 so far this year 0 for 6 from a three-point land. Now I don't think he's going to go shoot less than 0.100 for the rest of the season. I'm pretty sure he's gonna start making some threes. So the fact that usc is able to uh, to win these games without any kind of input from some of these players kevin patton, isaiah elohim, clark, slacker, also, let's not forget jaylen shelly jaylen, I think, has been out with an ankle injury, is that?

Speaker 2: 22:06

Well, he had a foot injury that he re-aggravated, but he has played since he logged like one minute or something.

Speaker 1: 22:16

I would love to see him get in the game some more because you know, I know that he again it's some groin pains he's going to go through, but he does bring a size element at his skill set that some of these other guys don't do A little bit more athleticism, I think as well. I know that some of these young guys are learning. Elohim had some issues on defense last night. He hit a couple, two quick fouls coming in because guys were going by him. But I think he has the ability to to stay with guys that some of the other guys on the team don't. But it's just a matter of being crafty and setting himself up to succeed. Um, okay, so how does this roster or how does the lineup look when we get into december? We play our first two Big Ten games, december 4th and December 7th, oregon and at Washington. Do you think there'll be any appreciable sort of stabilization of the lineup by the time we get there?

Speaker 2: 23:20

That's a good question. I see at this point the lineup being being situational probably going forward, you know? Yeah, I don't see. I. I think claude and thomas are going to be playing heavy minutes every single game and abo and williams are going to be probably between 20 and 30 minutes. Everybody else seems totally game to game.

Speaker 1: 23:49

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 23:50

Mark, yeah, I agree with that it's. I hate to just kind of regurgitate what's been told to us, but Jesus, a lot of this is just, you know, we do have positionless guys. We do have positionless guys. So it's really hard to kind of distinguish where you know, especially if it's kind of a given that, yeah, this team doesn't really have a point guard. They're just trying to scheme their way around it to varying degrees of success. You know you've got, if I'm just looking, this is what's crazy.

Speaker 3: 24:21

If we look at the metrics here I've got Claude, Josh Cohen, Terrence Williams, A abo and noli, and I know it's early, but they are all well north of our most efficient player last year was boogie and their bpo was way north of his. Now the you know it's it's little apples and oranges in terms of, uh, strength of opponent, but you know you've got so many guys to choose from that it's. It's literally kind of just you can just ride the hot hand. You know, to start the game and, like we've seen with with Patton, you know starting the game is not synonymous with really getting the bulk of the minutes too.

Speaker 3: 24:58

I think it's. I think really just there's going to be the scouting report and then there's going to be in the first five minutes, you know, as Mike Tyson said, to be the scouting report, and then there's going to be in the first five minutes. You know, as mike tyson said, everybody has a game plan until you get punched in the face. And I think we'll wait until we get punched in the face and then see what kind of adjustments we make well, that's kind of the benefit of having a relatively deep roster as far as experience goes.

Speaker 1: 25:15

so some guy you know, if you know it's not a chabuzo abo night, you're hoping it's a terrence williams night, maybe it'll be a Wesley Yates night, and I think for the most part you can. You can glide through that pattern with teams, like the teams we've just been playing, and get out of it Okay. But I think we're going to need to have some more consistency from there. Has to be somebody sort of like being the consistent alpha dog, I think, as we get into big, big 10 schedule it's a great point Go ahead, mark.

Speaker 3: 25:51

I'm just, who would that be Besides I? I'm guessing maybe Claude Thomas.

Speaker 1: 25:56

Claude or Thomas seem like. They seem like the two guys who could do it. I feel like Thomas has the mentality to do it. It seems like he's. I got to think he's a little bit shaken as far as his confidence right now because he's just not playing, I think, with the suddenness and explosiveness and you know, we talked about it last week. He seems a little sluggish out there and, uh, sky talked about the issue with his nose, which is which is very good issues, but at some point you just have to. You know, I don't know if you just play through it or you let him heal it a bit more, I don't know Like it's. It just seems like, uh, you obviously can't have a lot of games where he's having six turnovers like he did.

Speaker 3: 26:39

He's. I'll put it this way from a metric standpoint uh, that group of five I just gave you he's his bpo is like nine below the lowest in that group right now so that it is a lot of faith and I, you know, I don't know if I wanted to say, yeah, this is going to be the alpha guy, but in that group I went through.

Speaker 3: 26:57

I would just I love knolling um because he knows I don't say he knows his lip, he knows his limits, but that doesn't make him sound like a trent dil Dilfer of college basketball. He has a high limit but he knows that he's not going to go in there and throw one down like Jeff Drapagne. For those of us that have been around a long time. He knows exactly how to play within himself and that doesn't really mean alpha, that means kind of like a really solid number two when he's feeling it. And Cohen, like we said, is so contextual, it's either like a Josh Cohen game where it's boy. It's really not a Josh Cohen game offensively. So I think with those other three in that group you know Williams, claude and Abo to me would be one of those three I would expect to really be the alpha of the candidates right now. I agree with the whole St Thomas kind of pedigree thing, but I need more proof of concept of that right now.

Speaker 1: 27:47

Yeah, let me ask you a question. You guys, I want to get your your take on this question. Uh, who is the player who's been the pleasant surprise and who's the player who's so far has disappointed you, based on your own personal expectations, sky?

Speaker 2: 28:00

I think, um, it's pretty easy and we've said as much already in this podcast. The pleasant surprise has been Yates. I think he brought a lot more than anybody expected. No one even saw him play last year and he was injured. He wasn't even cleared until a couple months ago. Really, he has such a wide arsenal of moves to get to the hoop and to get his shot off it's. It's really impressive and he's pretty tenacious on d. I think, like with all the freshmen probably still working on the, the fundamental concepts of team defense, but in terms of like a man defender.

Speaker 2: 28:41

he's looked good, yeah. And then just, thomas, you know, I just, I just think he's working through his struggles. You know, he said of himself that he can either raise a gym or sink a gym, and so I think, part of I think he's the kind of guy who needs to probably play through his struggles and I think that's why he's still seeing so many minutes, as opposed to what we saw with Albo or Williams even, you know, going to the bench and then coming in and just dominating their minutes offensively.

Speaker 2: 29:15

Yeah, I think Thomas has been disappointing but you know, I think I think that the approach with him right now to me is the right approach.

Speaker 1: 29:25

You know, I agree with that. Uh, obviously the coaches have a lot of faith in him. He's not horrible. Right now he's averaging nine points. He's not shooting well is really the issue, but he's averaging nine points and he's averaging six boards and he leads the team and assists. So he's doing a lot of little things that don't aren't showing up in the the score, on the scoreboard, right. But so, if he can just and maybe that's the reason, maybe having to play more point, having to be a distributor, having confidence in his ability to distribute, and you know, he's also like he's not forcing a lot of shots.

Speaker 1: 29:58

I don't think. I think most of the shots he's taken are good shots. And here's a funny stat it's he's actually shot more than anybody else on the team. He leads the team in field goal attempts. He has he has twice the number of field goal attempts that terrence williams does and only two more points, which is pretty interesting. Um, so, yeah, so he's, he's shooting a lot and and it's not like you know, 37 right now. It's not it's not good, but it's not like, like you know, 37 right now. It's not it's not good, but it's not like horrific, right I think. Uh, you know if he had shot. Uh made eight. There was like eight shots easily that were just barely rimmed out or could have fallen in uh with a little luck. And he's shooting 50. So I don't think there's like anything endemic to his shooting struggles. Hopefully he stays confident. I certainly believe him. Certainly the coaches believe in him. So I have to go back and look at some old northern colorado tape to see uh, see what's going on here.

Speaker 2: 30:54

Um, let's go over to the yeah, something I want to add about his shooting, because, yeah, he's not really been shooting great um, and I think it's the nose. We discussed this before, I feel. Feel like it throws off your equilibrium or something, but here is kind of a statistic that I think supports that. Last year shot 86.8% from the free throw line. This year 50% Wow great point. He's been over 80% every season of college basketball until now it could also be.

Speaker 1: 31:26

It is still early, so I mean we'd have to look at last season's free throw. Perhaps he started out slow. That he could have started out slow that year too, right, he could have. He could have started out, you know, 50% and then went on a tear. But it could also point to there being some difference between Northern Colorado and USC, the main difference probably being he's probably playing in front of fewer people at USC, so maybe things aren't loud enough for him. Let's really quickly go to the message board. Rocksteady SC has a question, a couple questions for the group here. He did ask what do you guys think is the best rotation? Okay, and I think we sort of touched on that, is there anything you would throw in there you guys, as a surprise or not surprise, but you know what kind of? Is there any wrinkles beyond what we've discussed that you would throw in there in certain situations in the rotation?

Speaker 3: 32:26

Go ahead Sky.

Speaker 2: 32:28

I'd like to see more slacker. I think it's been tough, ideally with these kind of early season games. You want to be able to throw anybody out there, which USC did against UTSA in the exhibition. They did that against Chattanooga and they won those games easily and we saw pretty much everybody play.

Speaker 1: 32:47

They haven't really had that opportunity since, which I think is why slacker has not been playing much yeah defense is a bit of an issue, but he could be an x factor, so I want to see more of him yeah, I agree with that and, and you know, for me it's like there's an issue, there's a defensive issue with the team at this point. So it's like I'd rather have a guy come in and and hit some shots, potentially, and get him, get him warmed up, because we know he can score. So I'd kind of like to see him be a guy who another guy who can stretch the defenses and handle the ball.

Speaker 3: 33:19

So, mark, his sea legs on the season, I guess is how we'd characterize it. I would like to see and I think I mentioned this to one of the coaches in the offseason, I really want to see a leveraging of the outside shooting of Williams Abo and Slacker once he kind of gets his sea legs against with Claude's ability to really get to the paint. We see that at times, obviously not including Slacker, but it seems like when we're geometrically correct, I guess that's when Claude gets to the paint and basically we are an extremely tough team to defend, but sometimes we just get bogged down for whatever reason.

Speaker 1: 34:04

And a lot of it, like you said, again, they're getting to know each other.

Speaker 3: 34:10

But if there's one thing that I, one kind of concept I'd want to build out from that, it would be really just that, that nice kind of balance of a guy who can get to the paint and it's just just an absolute bear to deal with once he's in there. You know, with three guys that you know on a good night, at least two of them are really going to make your your are really going to make your night difficult from the perimeter.

Speaker 1: 34:30

Yeah, there's also another question. He says I love bangers. I think that was a massive issue with the previous staff. I thought we'd see more of AG. Dude averaged a double-double last year 13-10 for Bowling Green. I thought he and Abba would be the Thump Brothers all over the lower third of the court. Also, I know that there are some athletic limitations, but Bryce Pope was a pure scorer, has a take over the game mentality, not even sure if he's hurt or is it just defense. He came in for a reason. He could have gone to a lot of schools for the record. So basically, the question is why not more of AG and why not more of Pope? And is there anyone else on the team who sticks out? Who who could be eligible for more playing time? Uh sky, do you want to take that start?

Speaker 2: 35:11

yeah, from what I've seen in, uh, the games from ag, I think he just doesn't quite know where to fit in yet. Um, you know he's, he's a good athlete. Um, he has a lot of energy. He is able to I won't say necessarily one through five, maybe two through five because he's got pretty good foot speed for his size but he doesn't seem to have like much of a post-up game, at least not that he can. He's been able to get off so far. So I think offensively like, he's a little bit limited and the defense hasn't made up for that so far but he's, I think he's the best three-point shooter on the team.

Speaker 2: 36:01

There's percentages, so far that's.

Speaker 1: 36:03

That's pretty funny, you did. You've been talking about that for a while. I do agree about ag. Uh, the seems like I don't know just based on if you look at him, just on the numbers, you'd see like you'd think and where he played. You know Bowling Green, you know he's in Ohio and Mac country and he's averaging 13 and 10, and he's a post. So you're thinking, oh, this is a Midwest banger, but he's not really a banger. You know he's not really a banger. You know he's not really a banger. He's actually kind of a guy who I think would fit pretty well at home with an Andy Enfield type of team to be honest, yeah, he's more of a rim runner, but just more muscular.

Speaker 1: 36:45

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Speaker 2: 36:48

On Pope really quickly. You know another guy just having watched him in practice and in scrimmages great effort he's. I think he's listed at like six, three or six four. He's not, he's like about six feet six one, yeah. And yeah, I think defense is the issue with him. He doesn't really have the size to D up that hard, he's not much taller than Slacker, yeah. And just from the minutes I've seen him play in games and in the scrimmage, he just hasn't been able to get a shot off.

Speaker 1: 37:21

And Slacker's a little stronger too, like a little more wiry. If you have to look at him he's kind of you know.

Speaker 2: 37:26

Well, slacker is quicker, I think you know Pope, you know slacker is quicker, I think, yeah, you know pope has some beef to him. But I I feel like maybe he was kind of like a high, a high volume guy. He was clearly the number one option at ucst, yeah, and uh, it's interesting seeing him run it's.

Speaker 1: 37:43

He has an interesting uh gate gate, I want to say. But there's not a lot. The pope, the, the court's not long enough to gate usually. But uh, like I think uh sky you mentioned earlier he has he kind of bounces around like chuck o'bannon used to used to do he does.

Speaker 2: 38:00

He has a similar running style and you know, chuck o'bannon kind of ended up finding a good landing spot at tcu as like, basically like a spot-up shooter. Um pope has a little bit more of a like an unorthodox shot. He jumps really high and really far forward. So I'm just not sure if that's going to be consistent enough. It's like wide open looks that you would hopefully get.

Speaker 1: 38:23

Do you think we'll still have a Bryce Pope game, like we thought?

Speaker 2: 38:28

The probability is falling in my mind.

Speaker 1: 38:32

Yeah, mark, any thoughts on that whole series of questions?

Speaker 3: 38:38

You might remember, when I was kind of doing the box score scouting, my concern about Pope was that even though he had good kind of counting numbers, he was not really efficient. He had a pretty low BPO and I think you know, I would ask kind of what are we? What would he offer that we're not getting from guys that are really filling it up with the, with the Abo, you know, and a Williams and a Claude, I don't? I don't know. It's like, oh, we're missing this and Bryce Pope really adds it. I just don't know what's accretive about his game, and that's nobody's fault. I mean, we were assembling the roster I think it was like the first or one of the first commits and you kind of don't know what you have until you know what you have. So I just don't know if he's a fit and where he's accretive, unless I don't want to say the injury word, but I just did.

Speaker 1: 39:28

I think he hasn't been completely healthy as well. I'm talking about somebody else. A starter or a real rotation guy gets injured.

Speaker 3: 39:35

Maybe. Then, as far as AG, you know, interesting, Like I kind of posited before the season, I said, boy, he was in a really bad spot, that Bowling Green team was not efficient, and I said I think it was to Coach Roy. I said it seems like if he's just not your first or second option, like he was at Bowling Green, he would be a lot more efficient and that's what we're seeing. He actually had again I think this is like the third time he had a perfect game against a Grambling, a BPO of 100, no turnovers and he just, you know, for a guy that's that you've just look at him and you look at like kind of you know his resume, you would think, OK, here's the guy you hope you feed him inside and he he'll in terms of over 18 percent of the time, but he's just the money around the rim. And once you look at him it's like totally different.

Speaker 3: 40:23

But he can be trusted with the ball. He can really be trusted with the ball, you know. So again, I don't know if you just kind of, what do you do? I mean, I don't know To go across sports, how can you make our offensive line better in football? You just don't wave a wand and say, okay, now you're going to block.

Speaker 3: 40:37

Better, you got to play them, you just don't go to Rashawn Agee and say you're going to basically rebound a lot better, or just be a banger where that's not really been your thing before.

Speaker 1: 40:44

Yeah, it also could could be that that once we get into big 10, play when actual bangers exist on the other side, yeah, that some of these guys are going to be forced to dig down. Let's look ahead a little bit. Uh, just real quick. Uh, saint mary's, they are uh six and oh, on the season, they're a pretty good rebounding team. Like I mentioned, they're averaging 43 and a half rebounds per game. They got two guys, three guys, who average over seven rebounds per game, including Paulius Maraskas, who's averaging 10.3, 14 points, 10 boards, averaging a double-double. And then the other player, who you know, if you're looking for the candidate to go off against USC, is Augustus Marcellonis. He is 10 of 27, 37% from three-point land, averaging nearly 15 points. He is also averaging six assists, so he's their distributor as well as their scorer. It's going to be interesting. We're going to have to really buckle down defensively and, I think, really have to shoot well to get through this St Mary's team.

Speaker 2: 41:49

Yeah, I mean, looking at their schedule so far and their results, I think they're like a good team. I don't think they're like some kind of a. They're not ranked or anything. Let me put it that way. They barely got by Nebraska. They played Towson relatively close. I think it's a good matchup for this team right now to try to work on some things.

Speaker 3: 42:22

One thing that sticks out to me is this is a very I would say very good, exceptional, maybe offensive rebounding team To put a nice frame around it. This would be a good test for us, and let's just hope that we pass that test, because we've seen what happens when we don't really do our best on the defensive boards.

Speaker 1: 42:44

Well, if USC gets by St Mary, it could potentially play former conference co-member Arizona State, which is a very interesting team because they kind of came on strong toward the end with a lot of NIL money and had a really big time recruiting class that came in, and one of those players from their recruiting class, josan Sanon, is leading the team in scoring 14 points per game. And then they have another big-time five-star power forward, jaden Quaintance, who is just absolutely tearing it up in the block shots category 22 block shots in six games, so he's averaging, you know, nearly four blocks per game. The thing with Arizona state, though, is that they are really not a very deep team. They do not really. Uh, they play like six or seven guys, and then after that they don't have a whole lot. So, again, some good gauges between St Mary's, potentially ASU, or New Mexico, which beat UCLA earlier, to see what, to see where USC is at going into Big Ten season.

Speaker 1: 43:59

Really quick, before we go, want to remind everybody to go on to USC basketball dot com. Get your must bust shirts, get your sewer rat shirt. This team is a bunch of sewer rats. They're scratching and clawing, trying to get to wins, and you know there's not. You know, right now we're looking at, I think, not a hot to me. I'm not seeing much of an effort by usc to get people to the games at galen.

Speaker 1: 44:25

Uh, I think that there's um, you know, these are not great crowds. I mean, some of that's obviously to be expected and I wonder if USC is just sort of not trying to. Maybe you can't. I think they're making a mistake and thinking that we can't hype this team because maybe the team we don't know if they're going to be good. But I think they're missing an opportunity to set an early kind of standard at Galen Center under Eric Musselman, to encourage people to come in, to get in on the ground floor of what they you know what should be a good product down the road. It just doesn't seem like there's been a whole lot of changes from a standpoint of putting butts in the seats. What do you guys think?

Speaker 2: 45:12

Yeah, actually it felt like there were changes at the beginning of last year's season. There was a lot of promotion, a lot of hype and it backfired severely and I feel like that's made them a bit gun-shy, like they don't want to promote this team again with so many unknowns and then just have a flop yeah, mark um, yeah, I, I think it might just be.

Speaker 3: 45:40

How do I say this? It seems like it's been more of a groundwork than a? Um, than a ground game, if you will. You know, a lot, of, a lot more engagement with the media, like we've seen personally here in terms of just engagement with us, but it's not. You know, they haven't been really calling out the troops yet. I guess is how I'd gauge it.

Speaker 1: 45:57

Yeah, I think that the coaching staff has done Yeoman's work, promoting the teams. Coach Musselman's been everywhere. He's very, very visible, but I do think the administration needs to get its butt in gear and help him out a bit. What do you think, sky?

Speaker 2: 46:16

And you know what's interesting. To piggyback off of what you said, mark, it seemed like at the beginning of the season they were really courting the media. Not as much now. I don't know if there's been another open practice. It doesn't.

Speaker 2: 46:32

Yeah, like we haven't been invited to one but also, um, I know a lot of people noticed how at the beginning of the season, every time Muscleman did a Q and a and then someone his you know Wrangler would say okay, two more, one more. And every single time he had some kind of great like a button.

Speaker 1: 46:53

then someone you know Wrangler would say okay, two more, one more and every single time he had some kind of great like a button.

Speaker 2: 46:57

You know I could be here all day. My wife's already sleeping at home, or another time it was. I don't have anywhere to go. My wife's just watching Power reruns. He doesn't say that anymore. This is no knock on him, by the way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but he doesn't. No, he's kind of in and out recently.

Speaker 1: 47:13

Yeah, well, you know the season gets a little bit busy for these guys and he's scrambling to try to manufacture wins. So I get that. So hopefully we'll see some improvement there, hopefully with the Oregon and Washington games, which one of those is the Oregon game is a home game, the Washington game is a road game, but hopefully the Oregon game can draw some good crowds, a good crowd, especially if USC can quit itself well over in the desert. Hopefully that can set the stage for a good, a good crowd against Oregon. All right, boys, is there anything else you want to add? Before we put this one in the book, not on my end.

Speaker 2: 47:58

Nope, it'll be an interesting Thanksgiving.

Speaker 1: 48:01

Well, happy Thanksgiving everybody, from everyone here at usbasketballcom and we'll see you next week. Fight on, as always, fight on.