LOS ANGELES — He bent in a stance approximately 90 feet from the basket, nodding his head at a Michigan guard, Wesley Yates III attempting to bend the very concept of momentum to his own youthful will.
He’d never played a minute of collegiate basketball before this season, yes, spending an injury-plagued season at Washington before transferring to USC. He was prone to mistakes. He’d turned 60-year-old head coach Eric Musselman’s hair grey, at times. But his energy had changed the dynamic of USC’s program since he was inserted into the starting lineup, across a four-game win streak, and USC needed him in this Big Ten opener Saturday night against Michigan.
So, with Michigan holding a six-point lead 12 minutes into the second half, Yates III decided – for no reason – to pick up full-court. A blink passed. And Yates III poked a dribble free, corralling a loose ball and finishing a scoop layup, flexing every fiber of his biceps as the Galen Center rocked in a USC team that refused to quit.
The freshman was magnificent all evening, helping pull USC back from a 15-point halftime deficit. Youthful buzz, though, wasn’t enough to match Michigan’s might, in height and execution, and a back-and-forth Big Ten home opener slipped out of USC’s grasp in the final minutes, the Trojans falling 85-74 in a game much closer than the final score.
With 3:23 left and USC down just 73-71, point guard Desmond Claude picked up his fifth foul, a brutal blow to USC’s offensive flow. Michigan scored on a couple of subsequent possessions, 7-foot-0 Wolverines star Danny Wolf packed a Yates III floater, and Musselman was left with nothing more than a disgusted wave at officials on his way off the floor.
USC fell to 9-5 (1-2 Big Ten), despite 19 points from Yates III on 7-of-12 shooting and 19 from Claude. Wolf led Michigan (11-3, 3-0) with 21 points, 13 rebounds and seven assists, with four other Wolverines scoring in double figures.
By the end of the first half, this felt like an early defining moment in Musselman’s tenure, a well-traveled contingent of Michigan fans packing USC’s home gym and trading chants of “Let’s go blue!” with roars from Trojan faithful. The Big Ten promised physicality, and it delivered in the home opener: USC 6-foot-10 center Josh Cohen leveled Michigan’s Rubin Jones to the hardwood on one brutally legal first-half pick, and Saint Thomas roared in glee after drawing a foul on a moving screen, and multiple loose balls provoked a pileup on Interstate Galen.
Cohen was given a mighty assignment, the only big on the Trojans’ roster, forced to contend with two Michigan 7-footers in the imposing Vladislav Goldin and versatile Danny Wolf. And Cohen passed with flying colors, in the first half – holding Goldin to just two points and two rebounds. After battling Michigan to a 42-38 halftime deficit, though, USC quickly found they had no answer for Wolf. Four minutes into the second half, he’d already dropped in eight points, all on layups, and a thunderous Goldin jam suddenly left Michigan with a 15-point lead and USC shell-shocked.
They popped back up from the mat, though, as point guard Desmond Claude finished a pair of and-ones and Yates III roared his way to back-to-back layups. With 10 minutes left, Chibuzo Agbo tossed in a miraculous banked-in 3-pointer and Claude added a pair of free throws, and USC officially roared all the way back to knot the score at 63-63.
After Musselman had kept Cohen’s first-half seat warm, inserting the big back into the game whenever Michigan coach Dusty May turned back to Goldin, USC’s head coach turned more agile to close, turning to 6-foot-8 wing Kevin Patton Jr. in place of Cohen. He more than held his own, finishing with 14 points and a couple of blocks in helping to match and contain Michigan’s pace, finishing a layup to cut the Wolverines’ lead back to six with less than five minutes left.
Claude’s fifth foul, though, was the nail in the coffin. And USC simply couldn’t contain Wolf and Goldin down the stretch, the pair dropping in back-to-back layups to put the game out of reach with a minute left.