LOS ANGELES — They returned home from an East Coast slump bruised, and limping, and sick. Really sick. Just a few hours before a critical Tuesday night matchup with Big Ten basement-dweller Penn State, USC’s Wesley Yates III and Chibuzo Agbo Jr. were both listed as questionable, both guards having missed practices since the return from a loss to Purdue on Friday. So, too, was point guard Desmond Claude, his knee still yelping from a collision against Michigan State in early February.
Suddenly, USC faced the possibility of playing without its top three scorers in a game it simply couldn’t afford to lose.
There was a world, on Tuesday, in which Claude or Yates or Agbo might not have played, or faced a minutes restriction. This was not Eric Musselman’s world. For years, the USC coach has belonged to the Tom Thibodeau School of Heavy Minutes. And for years, dating to Arkansas and Nevada, Musselman had followed his late father Bill’s teachings: when in a tough spot, play your toughest guys.
Yates got smacked in the face in the first half, snatching a towel to cover his nose and heading straight for the locker room for minutes. Claude wrapped a bulky black brace around his right knee in rare stretches on the bench. But Musselman’s guys were plenty tough, on Tuesday, as USC’s offense looked as healthy as it had all season in a 92-67 blowout of Penn State.
Claude played 36 of 40 minutes, finishing with a brutal eight turnovers but sparking USC’s attack all night with 14 points on 5-of-6 shooting. Yates played 36, himself, never coming off the court outside of that first-half blow and finishing with 13 points on 5-of-8 shooting. Agbo went nuclear, in a flu game to be remembered, teeing off from the corners with 21 points and a career-best seven 3-pointers on a night when the Trojans shot 67% from the field.
And USC (14-10 overall, 6-7 Big Ten) reset its course after a tough road trip, pouncing on the last-place Nittany Lions and living to see another possible day come March.
For a week, USC had been dealt a curveball with Claude’s injury, initially not serious enough to keep him from playing an entire second half against Michigan State but scratching him from losses to Northwestern and Purdue. And Musselman’s offense, flickering like a half-broken string of Christmas lights without Claude to initiate, got an immediate first-half jolt with the point guard’s return.
The knee looked plenty fine, on a Euro-step a couple of minutes in, Claude darting around a big to flip up an and-one layup. The knee looked plenty fine, too, on a shot-clock-beating 3-pointer a couple of minutes later, dodging a defender’s contest and letting fly. Penn State hounded Claude for much of the first half, throwing a full-court trap at him in an effort to slow momentum; he committed three turnovers, but finished 4 for 4 from the field for 10 first-half points, including one pretty step-through reverse a minute before the break.
“When he’s really aggressive offensively,” Musselman said after USC’s victory over Michigan State, “we’re really good.”
Really good couldn’t even begin to encapsulate what took place in the second half on Tuesday, Claude’s slash-and-dash momentum suddenly caving the floor in on Penn State (13-12, 3-11). For 11 minutes, the Trojans didn’t miss a single shot from the floor. Agbo, a senior and the streakiest of shooters, busted a six-game slump with an early-second-half 3-pointer that doinked off the front of the rim and dropped home. It was a nod from the basketball gods, and a harbinger of the onslaught to come.
He hit three more, within the span of four minutes, the floor suddenly wide-open off of drives from Claude and wing Saint Thomas. Yates added a nasty step-back 3-pointer, flashing a youthful grin on his way back down the floor. Center Josh Cohen, tabbed again as a starter after losing the job to backup Rashaun Agee, played his most minutes (21) since Jan. 4 in holding Penn State’s 6-foot-10 Yanic Konan Niederhauser, the team’s second-leading scorer, to one point and one rebound.
Midway through the second half, USC’s attack had morphed from banged-up bludgeon to buzzsaw, ruthless in its precision. On one inbound, Claude broke a trap to find Yates, who touch-tapped to a streaking Thomas, who tic-tac-toed right back to Yates, who dashed down the lane to find a cutting Cohen for a layup on a play that would have made James Naismith smile somewhere.
Agbo banged home a few more 3-pointers, and USC walked away from the Galen Center with a banner offensive performance.
More to come on this story.