eric wise – Rush The Court

USC Post-Mortem

AMurawa — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 23:21:43 +0000

Now that we are officially in the offseason, it’s time to take a look back and evaluate each team’s 2012-13 performance. Next on our list: USC.

What Went Wrong

The biggest thing that went wrong were lofty expectations for a group of mostly transfers who had failed to have any success as a group in any of their previous stops. Despite the fact that this was a program coming off a six-win season, instead of playing with a chip on their collective shoulders, this team came out not just softly but selfishly. They went to a Maui Invitational with hopes of establishing themselves [...]

Pac-12 Power Rankings: Week 16

Connor Pelton — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 23:01:31 +0000

Congratulations to UCLA, who used a terrific sweep of the Arizona schools last week to climb atop our latest Pac-12 power rankings. Oregon follows closely behind, using the return of point guard Dominic Artis to boost itself in a rivalry win against Oregon State. California comes in as a unanimous pick at the three spot. The Golden Bears won their sixth and seventh straight games last week, dominating Utah and Colorado for nearly identical 18- and 16-point victories. Colorado, Arizona, and USC make up the second tier of our rankings. The Buffaloes earned an at-large clinching split in the Bay Area, while [...]

Pac-12 Report Card, Volume VI: Honor Roll

AMurawa — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 21:15:17 +0000

Professor Pac is back, trying to break down the mess that is the Pac-12, a task harder than you might think. This week’s Honor Roll is highlighted by Colorado, a team that bounced back from an awful week last time around to earn this week’s highest grade.

Colorado – A

A week ago, the Buffaloes earned the only F we’ve handed out this season. You can tell a lot about how a team responds to absolute failure. After losing to Utah while earning a 22-point deficit at one point, their F was well-earned. Likewise, this week’s A is appropriate. Colorado wasn’t mind-blowingly [...]

Pac-12 Report Card, Volume V: The Honor Roll

AMurawa — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 22:45:51 +0000

Professor Pac is back again this week with a progress report, but this time we’re going to try something new. Rather than go through all of the teams in one big ol’ honking post, we’re going to split these up into smaller bites: the honor roll (featuring the week’s best students), the solid students (the middle of the Pac), and the delinquents (those pupils that need to put in some extra work). Without further ado, let’s get things started with by checking in with the teacher’s pets.

Arizona – A

The Wildcats earned our team of the week honor by going [...]

Pac-12 Reactions: LA Schools Get Consolation Wins

Connor Pelton — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 16:31:00 +0000

Three thoughts on the Pac-12’s 3-1 Tuesday, where we’ll focus on USC and UCLA’s tight consolation wins in their respective tournaments on opposite sides of the country.

KO ball prevails in Lahaina. With athletic, talented players that didn’t suit up for SC last season like J.T. Terrell, Jio Fontan, and Eric Wise, Kevin O’Neill will eventually turn to a more aggressive tempo from the deliberate style he’s been known for. But early in the year, classic KO ball did the trick for the Trojans in their 59-53 overtime win against Texas. O’Neill’s guys plodded along in the second half, with both teams going [...]

Pac-12 Team Previews: USC Trojans

AMurawa — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 22:34:41 +0000

Throughout the preseason, the Pac-12 microsite will be rolling out these featured breakdowns of each of the 12 league schools. Today’s release is the USC Trojans.

Strengths: Fresh blood. You know the old legend about Keith Richards getting a complete change of blood in order to beat a heroin addiction prior to the Rolling Stones 1973 European tour? Well, if you’ll indulge a tortured analogy for a second: If Keith Richards is the USC basketball team, and his heroin addiction is SC’s 1-17 finish in a historically bad Pac-12, that blood transfusion is USC’s almost completely remade roster. With transfers, freshmen [...]

Pac-12’s Five Most Important Non-Conference Games

KDanna — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 06:57:05 +0000

The best thing about October isn’t watching football or the MLB playoffs; no, it’s all about analyzing college basketball non-conference schedules. Where are the potential RPI boosts? Trap games? Guarantee ones? So many possibilities for those ’12 or ’13 tilts!

But way out west, promise has quickly turned into embarrassment in November and December for the Pac-12 in recent years. Last season, the Pac went 9-38 against teams that finished the regular season in the RPI Top-100 and 3-28 against those finishing 50th or above, according to realtimerpi.com. Numbers like those are why Washington didn’t get an at-large bid even as [...]

Pac-12 Weekly Five: 09.21.12 Edition

Connor Pelton — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 20:55:01 +0000

Coach Larry Krystowiak and Utah picked up a huge commitment this week as San Francisco City College combo guard Delon Wright verbally committed to the Utes. Wright got a sense of just how loud and exuberant Utah’s student section, The Muss, could be when he took a visit to Salt Lake City for last weekend’s Holy War. Krystowiak is certainly getting the guys in place to rebuild a dormant Utah program (four-star small forward Jordan Loveridge is the other big catch, who will be a freshman in 2012-13). Wright will arrive for the 2013-14 season and will have two years [...]

USC Week: Q&A With Pachoops’ Adam Butler

AMurawa — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 15:31:01 +0000

As we go to wind down our coverage of the USC basketball program, we head back to Adam Butler of Pachoops for the second straight week for his perspective on the Trojan basketball program. Like me, Adam is pretty optimistic about the Trojans’ chances of a major bounce-back this season, although if anything he’s even hotter on SC than I am. Here’s our brief conversation on the immediate future for this new-look club.

RTC: My god, the Trojans were bad last year. But was there anything that happened that could bode well for the future for this team?

AB: The season ended. [...]

USC Week: What To Expect

AMurawa — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 20:14:31 +0000

We’re most of the way through our week-long look at the Trojans and have at least enough information to make some educated guesses about what the 2012-13 season has in store. With three players back from season-ending injuries and a whole host of new faces, we can expect to see a vastly different team compared to the walking wounded who wrapped up last season, but who exactly will lead this team and what will the final results be? Here are our guesses.

USC’s Leading Scorer – Jio Fontan. In Fontan’s three years of play, he’s proven that he is capable of [...]

USC Week: One-On-One With Kevin O’Neill

AMurawa — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 19:11:28 +0000

Kevin O’Neill took over the USC program in the wake of Tim Floyd’s abrupt resignation in June 2009.The instability within the program caused USC to lose much of its 2009 recruiting class, but O’Neill helped that team – playing without the hope of a postseason berth due to fallout from the Floyd era – keep it’s head above water, finishing with a 16-14 record. The following season, the Trojans were able to sneak into the NCAA Tournament, claiming a spot in the initial First Four, but last season the team was torn apart by injuries and recorded a program-worst 6-26 [...]

USC Week: Reinforcements Arrive Among Seven Newcomers

AMurawa — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 15:34:55 +0000

Coupled with the three players that the Trojans get back from season-ending injuries last season, Kevin O’Neill welcomes in four newly-eligible Division I transfers, two scholarship freshmen, and a walk-on freshman. This means that the USC team that finished off last season with an opening-round Pac-12 tourney loss to UCLA will bear almost no resemblance to the team that tips off the 2012-13 season in November. Below, we’ll introduce you to each of those seven newcomers, roughly in the order of impact that they’ll have on their new team.

J.T. Terrell, Junior, Guard, 6’3” 185 lbs, Wake Forest – Terrell played [...]

Pac-12 Morning Five: 02.01.12 Edition

AMurawa — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:00:00 +0000

It doesn’t come as much of a surprise, but it is still disappointing; Faisal Aden’s career at Washington State is now over, after an MRI on the knee he injured against Arizona on Thursday night showed a torn ACL. In the end, this goes down as a story interrupted in the middle with no satisfactory ending. Just as Aden was playing his best basketball of his career, and doing so in a manner far different than the wild, erratic style he had cultivated in his first year and a half in Pullman. Now we don’t get to see the final [...]

Pac-12 Morning Five: 01.19.12 Edition

AMurawa — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 16:01:22 +0000

It’s that time of the year when injuries start to play a bigger role for teams around the country. This week we’ve talked about injuries to C.J. Wilcox (hip stress fracture, out this weekend), Brandon Smith (due back from a concussion tonight), Mychal Ladd (thumb injury, doubtful this weekend) and Trent Lockett (sprained ankle, doubtful). But as of yet, we haven’t mentioned USC’s Aaron Fuller, who is dealing with a labral tear in his left shoulder. Given that he is a lefty, this is a nearly debilitating injury and he is considering undergoing season-ending surgery as early as next week. [...]

Checking in on… the Big West

Brian Goodman — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 19:10:09 +0000

Ryan ZumMallen, the RTC correspondent for the Big West, is the Sports Editor for The Long Beach Post and a contributor to SLAM Magazine. You can also find him on Twitter (@RyanZumMallen).

A Look Back

Life in the Big West Conference has taken quite a turn, as one team ran away with the championship as is now looking like a significant player on the mid-major scene, while at least four other teams are doing some last-minute jockeying before the conference tournament at the Honda Center in Anaheim next week.

Since we’re being honest, Long Beach [...]