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USC Falls to Michigan State 74-69 in 2nd Round of NCAA Tournament

The game was evenly played for almost 38 minutes, but in the end SC fell for the same reason they've fallen the past two NCAA tournaments:  lack of front-court depth.  You can argue that bad officiating was a major factor, but unfortunately it is part of the game and a legitimate reason why you need depth to win championships.

As soon as Taj picked up his 4th foul off a ridiculous call away from the ball, the game was essentially over.  SC fought strong with a small line-up but the lack of post presence and the need to team rebound only created open shots for Michigan State on the perimeter and to their credit they knocked them down at key moments.

Next Season

As for next season, at this point I think Demar and Taj will jump to the NBA. Demar's stock has risen in the past month and he's a lock to become a lottery pick, so that means goodbye.  Taj will need to enter the draft if he has hopes of making the NBA.  As the past two years have shown, he's not going to get any bigger, and the fact that he's old for his class will only work against him the longer he stays in college.

Daniel Hackett is another player that could possibly leave early to play in Italy, although it's less likely since his dad is on staff, but I wouldn't rule it out completely.  

Next year's team has solid potential with the core of possibly Daniel Hackett, Dwight Lewis, Leonard Washington, Nikola Vucevic, possibly Marcus Johnson (if NCAA gives him extra year), possibly Marcus Simmons (if he doesn't transfer) plus Alex Stepheson, the transfer from UNC, and an excellent incoming class. Oh, and who can forget LiL RoMeO?  The x-factor of course.

USC Beats Boston College 72-55 in 1st Round of NCAA Tournament

USC put the clamps down in the 2nd half and pulled away to a pretty comfortable victory.  Taj was the obvious player of the game with 24 points on 10-of-10 shooting.  An interesting fact on Taj's performance:

Gibson’s perfect shooting was the second-best performance in NCAA tournament history with a minimum 10 attempts, behind Kentucky’s Kenny Walker and his 11-for-11 in 1986. Gibson matched Marvin Barnes of Providence and Christian Laettner of Duke, who were 10-for-10 in 1973 and 1992, respectively.

Up next is Michigan State on Sunday.

USC Beats ASU to Win Pac-10 Tournament; Next Stop the NCAA Tourney

The team showed a lot of heart yesterday.  In the first half, SC struggled to penetrate through ASU's match-up 2-3 zone; it was even worse defensively as Derek Glasser and James Harden played the pick-and-roll and pick-and-pop with Jeff Pendergraph to perfection.  At the end of the half, SC was down by 15 with all the momentum on ASU's side.

To start the 2nd half, Tim Floyd bet the house by applying a full-court press and it paid off big. ASU simply wasn't ready for the aggressive press and after a few steals and big shots by Demar DeRozan, the momentum swung back to SC. The game was tight down to the final minute with the teams trading one big basket after another.  In the final minute, SC's pressure proved to be too much; Dwight Lewis hit a big open 3 and Daniel Hackett followed with 2 clutch free throws to take their first lead of the game.

With ASU down 1, out of a time-out Harden and Pendergraph tried to use the pick-and-roll once again, but Floyd called for a defensive switch with Taj defending Harden and Hackett on Pendergraph; Harden took the bait and tried to take Taj off the dribble, but Taj proved why he was named Defensive POY in the Pac-10 and made a huge clutch block. After Taj hit a free-throw to put SC up by 2, ASU had one more chance to tie or take the lead but failed with Harden missing a 3, giving SC its first-ever Pac-10 title.  Great inspired win.

Updated NBA Draft Thoughts

Still hard to say whether O.J. will enter the draft because it seems like he's factoring in his college experience heavily into the decision.  As for his draft stock, back when Chad Ford had O.J. at #9 on his draft board, I ranted and said he was a top 6 lock.  I also mentioned in the same post that O.J. is a better prospect than Eric Gordon, due to his polished mid-range game, and Jerryd Bayless, due to his higher ceiling.  Well, guess where Chad Ford has O.J. now?  Yup, he has him at #4 with Bayless dropping to #6 and Gordon dropping even further to #8; both players were ranked higher than O.J. at the time I posted my prediction.  The same goes for NBADraft.net. 

So where's my cookie?

With the tournament/season over, there is no doubt that Derrick Rose has seen his stock rise more than anyone.  Yes, if his stock rises it'll only be one place from #2 to #1, but before the tournament everyone had Michael Beasley as the #1 lock; now it seems like Rose might have a solid shot at going #1 overall.  I've seen a lot of comparisons made of Rose, some on-point and others completely off-point, but he reminds me of Stephon Marbury with a more pure point guard mind and minus the character issues.  They both have amazing first steps, elite leaping ability, ability to take over games single-handedly, and that innate understanding of using angles to create space for teammates.  The kid is going to be a franchise player real soon.

Taj and Davon

As for Taj and Davon, my thoughts haven't really changed about their prospects.  I think Taj would be dumb to not declare for the draft and at least familiarize himself with the process because he would commit draft suicide by staying his senior year due to his age.  Might as well use that free declare pass while you have it.  This year's draft looks a little too strong for him to declare since players like Darrell Arthur, Donte Greene, Joey Dorsey, J.J. Hickson, etc. could possibly push him into the mid-to-late 2nd round.  Taj needs to come back and understand that he will never be a back-to-the-basket player and start developing his jumper from beyond the baseline.  He wasted nearly the entire OOC conference schedule trying to play with his back to the basket and really hurt his progression during the season; I never fully bought the injured ankle causing him to struggle argument.  He needs to accept his role as a rebounding/defensive specialist and be even more efficient offensively by mixing up outside mid-range jumpers with quick moves to the basket and supplementing them with a lot of fakes and up-and-under moves.  Taj will never be physically dominating due to his natural skinny frame and therefore he needs to leverage his wingspan and quickness.  Less is more for Taj. 

Finally, I've made it clear before that Davon has absolutely no business being in this year's draft.  When players like J.R. Giddens are questionable to be early 2nd round locks, Davon is either going to barely be drafted or not drafted at all.  He's the perfect example of a player needing another year in college.  Davon's potential is not high enough to warrant a major gamble from a team and athletic 3's are a dime a dozen.  Davon needs to polish up his game overall and improve defensively before entering the draft.  The fact is, he'd get eaten up by most 3's in the league right now.  Hopefully he makes the right move and comes back for his sophomore season. 

Basketball Team Awards Winners

From WeAreSC.com:

Sam Barry Award MVP
O.J. Mayo (20.7 ppg, 4.5 rpg, 40.9 3-pt%, 684 points, 88 three-pointers)

Joe Barbato Award Top FT Percentage
Daniel Hackett (82.3 percent, 8.6 ppg, 3.8 rpg, 3.2 apg)

Dr. James Zumberge Award Top GPA
Keith Wilkinson (3.0, Communications, Journalism & Related Studies)

John Rudometkin Award 110% Effort
Taj Gibson (58.0 FG%, 10.8 ppg, 7.8 rpg, 88 blocks)

Tom Kimmel Award Top 6th Man
Angelo Johnson

Ernie Holbrook Award Most Inspirational
Daniel Hackett (8.6 ppg, 94 assists, 82.3 FT %, 34 steals)

Coaches Award
Dwight Lewis (10.8 ppg, 2.4 rpg, 31 3-pointers, 24 steals)

Top Rebounder Award
Taj Gibson (7.8 rpg, 259 total)

Reportedly Taj announced he would be coming back next season.  Also hear that word got out regarding Davon also coming back.  Take those reports with a BIG grain of salt, especially the latter one.  Congrats to the winners.

Taj Gibson Named Pac-10 POTW/O.J. Mayo Is 1st Team All-Pac-10

From Pac-10.org:

USC forward Taj Gibson has been named the U.S. Bank Pacific-10 Conference Men's Basketball Player of the Week for Mar. 3 - Mar. 9, Commissioner Tom Hansen announced today.

Gibson, a sophomore from Brooklyn, N.Y., helped lead USC to a home sweep of California and Stanford and achieve a third-place tie in the Conference standings. Against the Golden Bears, Gibson scored 21 points in the 93-89 overtime win. He tied the score at 80 with two free throws and USC then took the lead for good from that point on. Against No. 7 Stanford, Gibson posted his fifth double-double of the season, scoring 20 points and grabbing 11 rebounds, while also notching five blocks against the Cardinal.

Congrats to Taj, no doubt he deserved the honor.  The guy has been a rebounding and blocking machine for us and has worked hard game-in and game-out.  Taj was also named to the All-Pac-10 Third Team and All-Defensive Team.  O.J. Mayo represented SC well, being named to the All-Pac-10 First Team as well as the All-Freshman Team:

FIRST TEAM

Ryan Anderson    CAL    F    So.    6-10    240    El Dorado Hills, Calif. (Oak Ridge HS)
James Harden    ASU    G    Fr.    6-4    218    Los Angeles, Calif. (Artesia HS)
Brook Lopez    STAN    F    So.    7-0    260    Fresno, Calif. (San Joaquin Memorial HS)
Kevin Love    UCLA    C    Fr.    6-10    271    Lake Oswego, Ore. (Lake Oswego HS)
O.J. Mayo    USC    G    Fr.    6-5    200    Huntington, W.V. (Huntington HS)

PAC-10 ALL-FRESHMAN TEAM

Jerryd Bayless    ARIZ    G    6-3    199    Phoenix, Ariz. (St. Mary's HS)
James Harden    ASU    G    6-4    218    Los Angeles, Calif. (Artesia HS)
Davon Jefferson    USC    F    6-8    215    Lynwood, Calif. (Lynwood HS)
Kevin Love    UCLA    C    6-10    271    Lake Oswego, Ore. (Lake Oswego HS)
O.J. Mayo    USC    G    6-5    200    Huntington, W.V. (Huntington HS)

You know your conference is good when your All-Freshman team can contend for a National Championship.  Congrats to both O.J. and Taj. 

Final: USC 67, Arizona State 53

From ESPN.com:

Freshman O.J. Mayo scored 20 points, Taj Gibson added 19 points and seven rebounds, and Southern California took command early in the second half to beat Arizona State 67-53 on Saturday night for its fifth win in six games.

Freshman Davon Jefferson had 11 points and nine rebounds and Dwight Lewis scored nine for the Trojans (14-7, 5-4 Pac-10).

Taj played one of the best games of his career.  He didn't put up big numbers, but his impact was felt greatly on both sides of the ball.  On the offensive end, he shot 70% from the field and had 5 offensive rebounds which were big in stopping ASU's attempts at making a run.  On the defensive side, he shutdown Jeff Pendergraph in the 1st half and really prevented ASU from having any inside game.  The one play Taj made that I felt really stood out occured early in the 2nd half when Davon picked up his dribble and was trapped on the baseline; seeing that our guards were standing around, Taj ran from the key, opened up a passing lane, caught the pass, and made a nice turnaround jumper with less than 5 seconds on the shot clock.  That play really showed me how far Taj has developed since the start of the season.

Gibson Hopes to Get His Mojo Back

From LATimes.com:

Gibson said he would make a point of talking to officials during tonight's game "to ask what I'm doing wrong and try to see what I can do to better myself and not get fouls called on me."

He will be playing for the first time at Madison Square Garden, the arena he idolized growing up. He said he "always dreamed about" competing on the same floor where as a child he watched former New York Knicks guard John Starks make a game-winning three-point shot.

"It's a dream come true for me," Gibson said, "but at the same time it's a business trip because we're trying to come out with a win."

It's a good idea for Taj to communicate with the refs since he's getting a lot of bad calls and also committing a lot of bad fouls at the same time.  As poorly as Taj has been playing, he's still vital for our success and we need him to get back to being the Taj we saw last year. 

#22 USC vs. #4 Kansas Review

Final Score:  #22 USC 55, #4 Kansas 59
Current Record:  6-2
Current Ranking:  #24 (AP)
Next Up:  Memphis - 12/04 (Tues.)

It was a sloppy and disappointing game, but the team battled and kept it close to the end.  I said in my game preview that Mario Chalmers would be a "major determining factor" in the game, and that he was; he led the Jayhawks with 20 points and hit a ridiculously clutch shot from several feet beyond the 3-point line with 24 seconds to play to ice the game.  Here are my positives/negatives:

Positives

• How about the outcome of the game?  Despite playing sloppy (I'm amazed that we only had 18 turnovers), we were within a 2-point basket from tying up the game with less than 30 seconds to play against the #4 team in the nation.  Let's remember that this is a young team comprised of freshmen and sophomores and we went to the wire against one of the most talented and experienced teams in the nation.  That can definitely be seen as a positive.

• Up until this game, Kansas was averaging 89 points and hadn't shot below 50% from the field; on Sunday, Kansas put up 59 points and shot 37.9% for the game.  Our team defense continues to be the strength of this team and I thought we did a great job in the 1st half.  Coach Floyd made the right call using our big men to come out and bump the Kansas guards to prevent penetration off picks and allow our team time to rotate.  We really couldn't have played better defensively when you consider the circumstances. 

Negatives

• Once again our FT shooting was pitiful.  We shot 55.6% from the line, going 10 for 18, and nearly half of those misses came with less than 10 minutes to play.  I said from the start of the season that our FT percentage wouldn't fly against elite teams and in this game it showed. 

• Taj had yet another terrible game scoring 2 points off a garbage gimme lay-up and fouling out for the 2nd straight game.  Some people think Taj's poor play comes from his ankle injury, but I still believe it is entirely mental.  He is trying too hard to do things that aren't natural to him yet.  The fact that he's trying to shoot going right with his back to the basket alone tells me he's forcing it.  On the defensive end, he still isn't boxing out on many of his rebounds, which is entirely mental and has nothing to do with his ankle injury. Even my friend, who I converted into a SC basketball fan this season, turned to me during the game and said, "They need to take #22 out cause he's taking dumb fouls and just standing around down low."  Of course because of his limited knowledge of the team he didn't know that Taj is still our best rebounder whether he boxes out or not, but the point still stands...

• Kansas did a great job pressuring our players as soon as they touched the ball.  They were very active with their hands slapping away balls when our players carelessly held them within arm's distance or lazily dribbled up court.  You could see this pressure really getting to players like Dwight Lewis, who had a really bad game, and was pulled at the end by Coach Floyd.   

• Some have criticized O.J. for taking too many shots, but I only agree to an extent.  I have no problem with O.J. taking a lot of shots as long as they are smart ones, but it's the Kobe-like make-one-shot-then-force-another that is a problem. O.J. has to learn that he can't swing momentum by himself and that even after a big 3 he needs to take shots as they come and not try to be the hero by taking it upon his own shoulders to create another.

• Should I be surprised that the student section resorted to a pathetic "Lodrick's better!" chant?  It's further proof that the current students have almost no basketball knowledge or creativity. Maybe they forgot that Lodrick/Rodrick's dad, Bull Stewart, wants his younger set of twins, Hikeem and Kadeem, to play under Tim Floyd one day.  I'm sure Bull looks fondly upon the way Rodrick was undeservingly booed and mocked yesterday. 

The team is already in NYC right now preparing for tomorrow's game against Memphis at the Madison Square Garden.  I will have a game preview up later today. 

Anaheim Classic Review

Final Scores:  Game #1 - USC 60, San Diego 50, Game #2 - USC 57, Miami (OH) 53, Game #3 - USC 70, #18 Southern Illinois 45
Current Record:  5-1
Current Ranking:  #22 (AP), #24 (ESPN/USA Today)
Next Up:  Oklahoma - 11/29 (Thurs.)

SC took home the trophy in the Anaheim Classic, here's the positives/negatives from all three games:

Positives

• The biggest surprise of the tournament was the play of Davon Jefferson.  Going into the tournament, Coach Floyd made it clear he wasn't going to give Davon minutes that he hadn't earned in practice, so it wasn't clear how much we'd see DJ in the tournament.  Against USD, we saw Davon come off the bench and play 19 minutes, scoring 5 points and adding 3 rebounds; against Miami (OH) it was more of the same, 17 minutes for 7 points and 2 rebounds.  It wasn't until last night's game that we saw what all the fuss was about; Davon again came off the bench along with O.J. and Taj and proceeded to throw down high-flying dunks and show tough moves driving to the basket.  He finished with 20 points and 5 boards in 23 minutes of play, and finally showed why he was deemed a "straight to the NBA" prospect in HS (before the mandatory 1-year rule).  I mused before the tournament that I hoped DJ would get minutes to prepare him for the big 3, so it's a big relief for me to see DJ ready to go against some big name programs. 

• The script was flipped last night and it was SC playing the suffocating defense and forcing SIU to shoot 32.7% from the field. I thought Coach Floyd called a brilliant gameplan keeping Daniel Hackett at arm's length from Randal Falker the entire game and baiting SIU shooters to shoot.  It was the same gameplan used on Tyler Hansbrough in the tournament last season that kept him at 5 points on 1-6 shooting; thankfully SIU didn't have a ridiculously athletic player like Brandan Wright to make up the difference.  The defensive performance last night is the reason why I'm not worried about the lack of size in the front court in a conference filled with talented big men.  We make up for our lack in size with athletic players that can play multiple positions.  Of course there'll be a game like Stanford last year where things don't click and the big men dominate, but this team is as flexible as they come and can adapt to various types of teams.  In the 3 games we played, our opponents shot 32.8%, 42.6%, and 32.7% respectively.  That's very impressive.