LOS ANGELES — They stood, for minutes, inside a maelstrom, the Galen Center the loudest it had ever been to Eric Musselman’s ears. UCLA’s double-digit lead had been whittled away by this motley crew of USC transfer-portal imports, and they could all feel it – the chance at a crosstown rivalry win in an instant classic.
UCLA coach Mick Cronin kept his arm cycling on the sidelines, waving in an army of new baby-blue Bruins to try to stop the bleeding as minutes waned. USC guard Wesley Yates III nodded his head at any teammate in the vicinity, giddy, after a layup cut UCLA’s lead to two points with 2:39 left. Fiery forward Saint Thomas grabbed a rebound and was fouled, to follow, setting up a pair of free throws that could finally give USC the lead in this matchup of grit against grit. On the baseline, he nodded as the arena roared, slapping hands with USC assistant athletic director Gavin Morris. It was there.
And then Thomas clanked a free throw off the rim. Once. Twice. And on the other end, with a little more than minute left and a one-point lead, UCLA guard Sebastian Mack launched a deep moonbeam from the wing at the shot-clock buzzer – arcing, sleepily, over a crowd that had berated the Bruins all night.
It dropped, and the Trojans’ upset hopes dried up from there. Cronin and Mack and UCLA (15-6 overall, 6-4 Big Ten) held on to put away an upstart USC squad, 82-76, in first-year Trojans coach Musselman’s first taste of the rivalry.
Mack finished with 14 points on 4-of-7 shooting for UCLA, which has won four straight after a four-game losing streak. Forward Eric Dailey Jr. added 16 timely points to lead the Bruins, while USC backup big Rashaun Agee led the Trojans (12-8, 4-5) with 21 points.
In the summer, a couple of short months into the process of figuring out where exactly his puzzle-piece roster fit, Musselman admitted in one of his first media availabilities that USC was “probably a little thin” at both point guard and center. His floor general was 6-foot-6 Desmond Claude, who had mainly played a combo-guard role in a previous stop at Xavier. His center was 6-10 Josh Cohen, a few inches shorter than most of the behemoth bigs in the Big Ten.
Seven months later, Cronin brought a scythe of a gameplan into the Galen Center, a veteran coach and a veteran program slashing away at the weaknesses in USC’s roster makeup. Not a few minutes in, and pesky Bruins guard Skyy Clark was picking up Claude full-court, as Cronin flapped his arms in motioning for UCLA defenders to trap Claude and limit the airspace of any ballhandler near the top of the key.
For stretches in the first half, it played to perfection, turnover-prone but top-scorer Claude limited to just three points as his driving lanes were smothered. After a rim-running layup from UCLA’s William Kyle III, USC’s Wesley Yates III caught a pass deep in the corner and disappeared into a trap of Bruin jerseys, stepping out bounds. After a pass slipped through wing Chibuzo Agbo Jr.’s hands on the next possession, USC had six early turnovers within the first 11 minutes.
USC hung around, for the rest of the first half, despite not holding a single lead after the first three minutes. Cronin’s pressure left wide-open gaps for shooters in the corners and at the top of the key, and a variety of Trojan snipers took aim. Yates, who finished with 19 points in continuing to assert himself as a future cornerstone of Musselman’s program, knocked down a couple of 3-pointers from the corner. Thomas, perhaps the only person on the court Monday night who was buzzing with more fire than Cronin, nailed a two more shots from the top of the key and let anyone within shouting distance know about it.
The Trojans, though, went into the half down by five, thanks to a bevy of too-easy drives to the rim during a first half in which UCLA shot 68% from the floor. And after a quiet first frame from 7-foot-3 Aday Mara, starting in place of leading scorer Tyler Bilodeau (13.9 ppg), the blossoming Mara laid waste to an undersized USC roster with 12 points, 11 rebounds and five blocked shots.
A year ago, the Spanish giant was an afterthought in the crosstown clash, playing 20 minutes combined in two matchups. On Monday night, he was the difference-maker. Early in the second half, Thomas drove baseline – Mara swatted his layup, only for Thomas to recover and go back up and get swatted again by Mara, the ball careening off of Thomas’ noggin in insult to injury. A few seconds later, UCLA’s center stuck his tree-branch arm out to thin air for a pass from Dylan Andrews for a pretty layup; a tip-in layup and a fadeaway jumper came just a few minutes later, giving the Bruins an authoritative 11-point lead.
Mara’s contemporary in cardinal-in-red, though, gave him all he could handle as the Trojans hung around. Agee stands 6-8, and looks at times closer to 6-6, but he’d been battling opposing bigs for years at Bowling Green, and he faced one of his toughest Big Ten matchups yet off the bench in a player seven inches taller in Mara. Unafraid, and undeterred by two early airballs, Agee went rollicking down the lane to finish with 15 second-half points; an and-one layup cut UCLA’s lead down to three with five minutes to play, setting the stage for a gut-wrenching finish.
More to come on this story.
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