Exhibition games shouldn’t be seen as season-defining events. They are, after all, exhibitions. They certainly don’t mean a whole lot in professional sports, other than potentially unearthing some lower-end roster decisions which could carry long-term benefits. Generally, though, we don’t focus on how Patrick Mahomes or LeBron James perform in exhibitions. In college basketball, it is usually the same. These are simply games in which coaches get to coach their players and give them a test drive before the real season begins. However, there can be exceptions to all of this, and Eric Musselman might have created one such exception at USC basketball. Kevin Sweeney of Sports Illustrated told us this about USC’s exhibition win over No. 6 Gonzaga in late October:
“USC didn’t treat this like an exhibition, really pushed its starters to the brink and did everything it could to win the game. Probably a decent move by Muss – try to build some buy-in and confidence inside the locker room while getting a big-name win to build excitement with the fans. Was impressed with how Claude looked as essentially a full-time point guard (a new role for him) and the positional size and shooting they have from 1-4 is impressive,” Sweeney said.
That decision by Musselman to go all-in for an exhibition game certainly seemed to feed USC’s confidence as a team. The Trojans looked very, very good in their 77-51 win over Chattanooga in the regular season opener on Monday. They looked like a cohesive team despite having only one player on the roster who returned from last season’s Andy Enfield team. On defense and offense, USC looked like well-connected team which knew exactly what it was supposed to do and where it was supposed to be on the floor. USC looked like a well-coached team.
Musselman could have soft-pedaled the Gonzaga game. Interestingly enough, it’s obvious Gonzaga did not go hard in that exo versus USC. The Zags just beat No. 9 Baylor by 38 points on Monday night. They took it easy on USC. Yet, USC beating Gonzaga still carried real value for the Trojans, who looked very confident in their win over Chattanooga. Eric Musselman made the right chess move, and it could have a huge effect on USC’s season. Let’s hope it does.
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