LOS ANGELES — They didn’t have much rim protection. They couldn’t stop interior penetration. They fought an uphill battle, every free-wheeling transition bucket matched by a Golden Bears onslaught on their rim at the Galen Center, a game slowly slipping away from Eric Musselman and USC basketball.
So with time waning in the second half, on Sunday, Musselman stuck to the very guns of how he’d built USC’s roster — and closed a basketball game without a center.
Without a big man, at that. Musselman had pulled just two, out of the transfer portal, since the spring month he’d spent working the phone lines down at USC’s Manhattan Beach Portal House. He was matter-of-fact, with reporters and his players alike in the months to come, that USC’s program was thin on interior size and shot-blocking. They’d have to compensate with speed and versatility. Sunday night against Cal with roughly 13 minutes to go, Musselman yanked Bowling Green transfer big Rashaun Agee and went with five wings.
He hedged his bets. And he hit big, for a while. But with less than 30 seconds left and USC down two, Cal ripped down a back-breaking offensive rebound — simply overpowering the Trojans inside — leading to free throws from Andrej Stojakovic to all but ice a 71-66 win.
Guard Desmond Claude led USC with 20 points on 7-of-14 shooting. Sparkplug forward Saint Thomas added 15 but finished just 7-of-17 from the floor.
With two seconds left in the first half and Cal resorting to straight iso-ball with USC big Rashaun Agee on a switch, Cal sparkplug guard Jovan Blacksher Jr. pulled back a dribble and simply launched a triple over Agee’s outstretched contest.
It dropped again. It was Blacksher Jr.’s fourth three in five attempts and 18th point of the first half, and Agee began screaming in frustration to nobody in particular on his way off the floor.
It was that kind of free-wheeling first half at Galen on Saturday, little offensive sets being run in this old Pac-12 showdown of now-nonconference foes. In the summer, Michigan transfer Terrance Williams II told media that Musselman had told him in recruiting that USC’s athletes would have the “freedom to do what we want” offensively — as long as they played defense — a style formed largely from Musselman’s early coaching days in NBA ranks.
Time and time again, USC’s ballhandlers simply eschewed any play-call and hunted matchups on Cal’s defense. Junior guard Desmond Claude, who Musselman specifically called out two games ago for having a “minimal” impact in USC’s win over Idaho State — hit a couple of threes and worked his way into the lane to draw fouls. Freshman Wesley Yates III, furthering the sheer chaos that’s confounded Musselman but made it impossible to remove him from the floor, gave the Trojans a massive lift with 10 first-half points and one spin-off a screen in the opposite direction for a pull-up jumper.
That offensive flow, though, was often mitigated by a complete lack of interior defense for much of the night. Cal hovered well above 50% from the floor for much of the night; midway through the second half, Cal’s Joshua Ola-Joseph flew for an uncontested baseline dunk and Musselman turned to his bench and roared with hands raised.
He stuck, still, with the no-center group he’d put out a couple of minutes earlier. Thomas. Claude. 6-foot-7 guard Chibuzo Agbo Jr. and 6-foot-7 wing Terrance Williams II. 6-foot-6 Swiss Army Knife Matt Knowling. They provided an instant spark, Knowling swatting a late-clock Cal shot and freewheeling his way to a tip-in of his layup miss to cut Cal’s lead to one with nine minutes left. A couple of minutes later, Thomas scored back-to-back post-up buckets on Cal guard DJ Campbell, taunting him on subsequent trots down the floor with a rock-a-baby and a flex.
A three-minute-long scoring drought was finally snapped late in the fourth as Ola-Joseph knifed his way in for a layup, with no USC paint presence to contain him. And Musselman’s gamble fell short in waning minutes, the Trojans (3-1) trudging off the floor with their first loss of his tenure at Galen.