The past few years, USC has been a basketball school. The basketball program has done really well, which took at least some of the sting out of the football program’s woes under Clay Helton. USC sports fans could look forward to November, knowing that even though a miserable football season was ending, a promising hoops season was beginning.
This year, football has returned to prominence at USC under Lincoln Riley. Fans are excited about the gridiron, as they should be and as they expect to be at this time of year.
The basketball program did its part to make Novembers and Decembers bearable the past few years.
Now that the football program is once again the headliner at USC, the hoops program might have a year in which it recedes far into the background.
An absolutely disastrous season opener — a 74-61 loss to Florida Gulf Coast at home in the Galen Center — does not bode well for this team. Yes, we have to let the season play out, and it could be this was a horrible one-time event which the Trojans will overcome in the course of time.
However, it’s pretty easy to envision a season which spins wildly off the rails.
We really don’t need to spend much time studying this game. Andy Enfield said in the offseason that this was one of the best shooting teams he has had at USC. He said that based on practice, not live games. Enfield should have held his tongue, because anyone can shoot well in practice. Games are the measure of whether a team shoots well.
USC has not been known as a good 3-point shooting team or program under Enfield, who usually relies on his big men and his defensive size to win games. USC has Vince Iwuchukwu out due to health problems. Not having his star big man available has forced Enfield into a smaller lineup and a faster tempo built on shooting.
That’s not the way Enfield normally plays, and it’s not the way Enfield wins. USC really has to prove it can win that way. This loss, based on 3-of-19 3-point shooting, shows that the Trojans might not be built to win very much at all this season.
One can very legitimately say that the most important USC basketball event this season is not a game of any kind, but a recruitment. Isaiah Collier, the top point guard in the country, will announce his decision on Nov. 16. USC is the favorite. As long as that happens, USC will be set to be a great team next season.
This season might have to be thrown in the trash can.
That’s okay if it’s a one-year problem, and nothing longer than that. Isaiah Collier would make sure this coming season is an isolated and limited problem.
We now return to our regularly scheduled USC football season.
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