I was excited to see what sort of team Andy Enfield would put on the floor during his 2nd season at the helm of the USC basketball program. Given that it was a boring Monday night, I was even hoping for some sort of showing from the students. There might have been 20 total students, and the given attendance of 2,267 seems laughably high. Amanda Enfield wasn't even there as eye candy in the section next to me. And if last night was indicative of the style of play to expect this year, Andy Enfield has a long road ahead of him. A road that isn't leading to the NIT.
USC has three offensive weapons, and all of them are guards. The best player on the team is redshirt sophomore transfer Katin Reinhardt, formerly of UNLV and Mater Dei High School, and he finished with 19 points on 5 of 14 shooting. True freshman point guard Jordan McLaughlin looks the most naturally talented of the bunch, and he finished with 15 points on 5 of 12 shooting. If he can keep himself a little more under control when he drives to the hoop, he could average over 20 points per game. Rounding out this small group of offensive contributors is Julian Jacobs. He's the team captain again this season, and he's in the right place at the right time most of the game. His effort will be the glue that holds this team together.
As for the rest of the group, USC doesn't have anyone that would be considered a center. Nikola Jovanovic, forward listed at 6'11" but really is 6'9", is matching up against our opponent's big man. Malik Martin is worse than I could've fathomed. He's worse than DeWayne Dedmon was when he came in, and Dedmon didn't even know the rules of basketball yet. Martin might be the softest 6'11" you've ever seen in person, as he might weigh 200 pounds in total. I fully expected 6'7" Darion Clark of Oak Hill Academy to play the power forward position, but he's not very coordinated in the low post. There's another Serbian forward named Strahinja Gavrilovic who might be 6'6" but is listed at 6'9" somehow. Not even on hockey skates would he be 6'9".
If you haven't yet noticed the problem, we're really small. We came out in a sunken 3-2 zone, and we still could not get a single rebound. Tennessee Tech's doesn't have a player over 6'9", yet they were able to out rebound the Trojans 42-33. Even worse still, the Tennessee Tech Golden Eagles had more offensive rebounds than defensive rebounds. They had the same number of offensive rebounds as USC had defensive rebounds. Think about that. We played a fucking zone and had just as good of a chance at a defensive rebound as the offensive did. That's simply a coaching failure, as none of the forwards for USC appear to even know what boxing out is. Julian Jacobs, the shortest guy on the team, led the team in rebounds. This goes back to the effort I referenced earlier.
USC won last night because Tennessee Tech is not a good basketball team. Any quality shooting team would've been able to put USC away in the first half. Especially given a 2nd chance opportunity on every other possession. And don't get me wrong by thinking size and rebounding are the team's biggest issues. USC went 13 straight minutes of a 40 minute game last night without a field goal. So to recap: We play an extremely soft zone, can't rebound on either side of the floor, and appear to still be prone to extremely long droughts on offense. I really hope that Nikola Jovanovic just had a bad game last night, because we need him to step up or it's gonna get ugly. Given what I saw at Galen last night, I'm taking the under on 5½ total wins in Pac-12 conference play for USC.
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