USC Basketball: Expert Most Concerned About This Bulldog Saturday
The Gonzaga Bulldogs have been a perennially elite team for the past two decades, and are responsible for ending your USC Trojans' best March Madness tournament run back in 2021 in the Elite Eight.
This Bulldogs group is a much different team than their 2021 National Championship runner-up squad, but one former bench player has stuck around, and he's since developed into their best player.
Anton Watson, a 6'8" forward, is a high-flying, versatile wing that creates problems for every defense he plays.
Most recently, against an elite defensive team in UCLA, Watson put up 32 points on 14-15 shooting from the field in a 69-65 win.
Matt Zemek of Trojans Wire corroborates:
"The Zags have established themselves at a higher level than USC has in the first three weeks of the college basketball season. No individual player has set a higher standard on the Zags than Anton Watson. If you watched that UCLA game, you would readily agree."
Gonzaga head coach Mark Few has been stellar when it comes to developing scoring forwards, as the Bulldogs went from having Kelly Olynyk, to Rui Hachimura, to Drew Timme, to now, Anton Watson, indicating their pattern of finding roles for scoring big men to lead their teams to 30-win season, after 30-win season.
USC's work is cut out for them, as even if the Trojans can get going offensively, stopping Watson and a solid group of guards led by former Creighton stud Ryan Nembhard will be a major challenge in Vegas Saturday night. Let's see if Andy Enfield's group is ready to go.
Don't forget to join our community at LA Sports Report, where we celebrate all things Trojans!
