USC Basketball: Starter Breaks Down Trojans' Early Losses
The Trojans' 6-2 start has been a bit less impressive than you'd think.
Despite winning six of their first eight, the two losses (and even some of the wins) that USC has experienced have featured red flags that may rear their ugly head as the season goes on.
For example, in their double-digit loss to the UC Irvine Anteaters, 3 players who played over 30 minutes recorded point totals in the single-digits, and the team as a whole shot a porous 19% from behind the arc.
In their 72-70 loss to Oklahoma, they were out-rebounded 36-28, including ceding a game-winning rebound and subsequent put-back.
The team is incredibly dependent on Isaiah Collier and Boogie Ellis to do mostly everything, ranging from shot creation to ballhandling, and playmaking.
The Trojans' archaic offense is a major point of concern, and with their underperformances down the stretch each of the past two seasons, it's valid to be worried that these could all be warning signs of more serious issues.
Asked to break down their early losses, here's what forward Kobe Johnson had to say:
“It was just the little stuff, the little details that we didn’t do. I think that’s something that we really need to clean up here real fast."
Johnson's comment is true in that the team definitely has things to clean up – that's indisputable. Whether or not those issues are truly "little," however, is another conversation.
Being out-rebounded by a fairly wide margin against a similarly-sized Oklahoma team suggests that the Trojans have issues on the glass, but that isn't necessarily a quick fix.
Josh Morgan paces the team with a mere 5.6 rebounds, which isn't a good look given that he's the only true big man on the floor a lot of the time, pacing USC's centers in minutes per game.
Meanwhile, Kobe Johnson averages 4.8 rebounds, and when a team's 6'11 center is rebounding around the same clip as their 6'6 wing often tasked with guarding top players on the perimeter, there may be a larger issue.
Now, to that end, it's difficult to get much of a read on this USC squad, as injuries and (relatedly) limited depth have left this team short-handed in some form in all 8 of their games thus far.
To avoid getting too ahead of ourselves, it's best to wait until Vince Iwuchukwu's role is fully carved out, and Bronny James makes his eventual debut.
With a very difficult matchup against the 11th-ranked Gonzaga Bulldogs in Las Vegas on Saturday, expect us to get a better read on how this team fares with the best of them.
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