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Entering this week, USC was in control of its path to the program’s first Pac-12 regular-season championship since the 1984-85 season. In fact, that potential got even a further boost Monday when the Trojans rolled to a dominant win over Oregon.
The rest of the week hasn’t gone as well.
No. 19-ranked USC has now lost back-to-back games for the first time all season — both by double digits — after taking a 71-61 defeat on the road at Utah on Saturday.
That follows an 80-62 loss at Colorado on Thursday and makes three losses in the last four games overall, leaving the Trojans (19-6, 13-5 Pac-12) a half game behind UCLA in the standings and also behind Oregon in terms of winning percentage with two regular-season games remaining — including the finale vs. the rival Bruins.
Perhaps more than the big picture impact, the standings, NCAA tournament seeding, etc., it seemed as if coach Andy Enfield was mostly just flummoxed by the performance he had watched as his team shot 37.2 percent from the field (just 2 of 15 from 3-point range), his entire starting lineup seemed to struggle and all the while Utah drained 9 of 15 3-pointers to maintain control of the game throughout the second half.
Drew Peterson scored a team-high 19 points off the bench to match his season-high and seemed to be the only steady spark after halftime, while freshman Pac-12 Player of the Year contender Evan Mobley finished with 11 points (on 2-of-7 shooting) and 8 rebounds. It’s the second time this season that the Utes (10-11, 7-10) shutdown Mobley, who had just 3 points and didn’t attempt a field goal in the earlier win over Utah.
Unfortunately, that was only part of the Trojans’ problems Saturday.
“Our starting five just didn’t have it tonight,” Enfield said. “If you look at our numbers from a shooting percentage, turnovers [perspective] it was really our worst performance probably of the entire season.”
So where does USC go from here, likely back out of the AP Top 25 poll, now trailing in the conference title race and again having to worry about NCAA tournament seeding with two regular-season games remaining against Stanford and UCLA? Again, Enfield was still very much in the moment and more focused on lamenting what had just happened.
“There’s no excuses — we have to play better than we did tonight,” Enfield said. “We started out the game fairly strong defensively and offensively, but if you look at the shooting percentages, you can’t go 2 for 8 with a turnover (Isaiah Mobley), 2 for 7 with 2 turnovers (Evan Mobley), 2 for 10 with 2 turnovers (Tahj Eaddy), 2 for 5 with 4 turnovers (Ethan Anderson). You just can’t do that. Isaiah White didn’t have any turnovers, but he had three chances in transition to finish and didn’t finish one of them. So if you look at our starting five, which I just went over, you just have to play better. There’s no excuses. If you want to win Pac-12 games on the road, you can’t play like that. …
“I’ll take the blame for this. I’m the head coach. We’ll deal with our mental state of mind here this week, but at some point players have to step up and do what they’re capable of doing. And tonight we didn’t do that.”
USC actually jumped out to an 18-8 lead, spurred by 6 points each from White and Peterson.
The rest of the game largely belonged to the Utes, who just kept raining down big 3s.
A short jumper by Max Agbonkpolo on the final possession of the first half sent USC into the break with a tenuous 29-27 lead. Utah then scored the first 8 points of the second half — on a Pelle Larsson 3 and 5 straight points from Timmy Allen — and never trailed again.
At one point, as Riley Battin knocked down a 3 from the right corner, the Utes had made 9 of 10 shots while USC had missed 6 straight. It was just that kind of night for the Trojans.
USC really only made one sustained surge in the second half, scoring 6 straight points at one point (4 from Peterson) to draw to within 55-50 with plenty of time left. But Branden Carlson dropped in another open 3 for the Utes, and after Peterson made a jumper on the other end, Alfonso Plummer added to the 3-point barrage for the hosts as the lead started to swell again.
The Trojans got two free throws from Isaiah Mobley, and Utah got another 3 and a layup from Plummer. USC got two free throws from Evan Mobley, and the Utes answered with another Plummer 3 to make it a 13-point game with 2 minutes left.
Plummer finished with a team-high 19 points for Utah, including 5-of-7 shooting from 3-point range, while Allen finished with 15 points.
“Very disappointed in our second half of basketball. It was our worst half probably all season,” Enfield said. “Our starting five played very poorly on both sides of the ball in the second half, and we just can’t win games [like that]. If we play guys a certain amount of minutes, they have to play a lot better than they did tonight. It’s very disappointing. …
“Utah’s a decent defensive team, they’re a good defensive team, but it had more to do with our guys. Tahj Eaddy had a lot of open shots and he missed open shots, he also missed a front end of a one-and-one. Evan had many chances, Isaiah had many chances around the rim to finish — didn’t finish shots in the lane. Ethan had 4 turnovers. … If you don’t play good offensive basketball and you can’t score when you’re supposed to score, it adds up over a 40-minute game.”
Enfield noted the challenge of USC playing its fourth game in eight days, while traveling to altitude on the Colorado-Utah swing. To be fair, he was asked about it and merely responded, so it wasn’t as if it was being put forth as a primary excuse for the struggles.
The Trojans will now get a few days off until returning the court at home at Galen Center on Wednesday, needing to close strong for all the aforementioned reasons while also hoping to rebuild some momentum heading into the postseason.
“We still believe in them and we think we have a lot to play for here in the next couple weeks,” Enfield said. “… We have to play better. It’s pretty simple. You can’t shoot 37 percent from the field, 15 percent from the 3-point line and have your starters do what they did tonight. It’s pretty simple — they have to play at the level they’ve played all season, and if they do that next week we’ll be fine.”
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