Andy Enfield discusses USC's offensive improvement

This year’s USC basketball team is a lot different than the successful groups of the previous few years. In the prior three seasons, the Trojans had a Mobley or two running protecting the paint alongside several other athletic bigs — making USC an ace defensive unit in 2020 and 2021 and a solid group last season. Well, this year, head coach Andy Enfield had to think outside the box. The Mobley boys are all gone, and after losing top-40 freshman seven-footer Vince Iwuchukwu for most of the season so far, USC has had to go with a much smaller and less defensive-minded front-court.

The Trojans still make ends meet on defense and maintain an above-average unit. It’s just that, without a top-tier defense, the offense has to step up drastically. In the early going, this group struggled to play good basketball on that end of the court. But lately, Enfield is liking what he’s seeing from his team.

“We’ve really improved offensively, especially the last couple weeks,” Enfield said at his press conference this week. “We’re right there. We have a ways to go getting some guys who need to improve certain things. But really proud of our effort.”

The largest area of improvement has been curbing the turnover issues. USC coughed the ball up far too often against their weaker non-conference schedule, but are taking much better care of it in their last few Pac-12 contests.

“We had nine turnovers in (each of) the last two games. That’s important for us to play smart offensive basketball. We’ve really improved offensively, especially in the last couple weeks. And so we’re right there. We have a ways to go getting some of our guys with certain things where we need to improve on. But very proud of our effort and how unselfish they’ve become on offense.”

Andy Enfield went on to note that he’s seen significant positive development from his team’s offense just in the last few games.

“After that Washington — or was it Washington State? (It was). New Year’s day, it was very disappointing. We didn’t share the ball, there was a lot of one-on-one play and just bad shots. And then we were giving up 14 threes. We just didn’t do anything well that day. Came back and we played well against UCLA, especially in the second half. And so, I think we’ve learned from from our mistakes and we just have to keep improving on it. I thought the first half we took two or three one-on-one bad shots in a couple-minute stretch and then we went back to playing team basketball. That’s what we have to do.”

Though the Trojans ultimately fell against UCLA, the Bruins are one of the top defensive units in the country and USC stuck right with them, on the road, from start to finish. No moral victories, but still plenty of positive signs on the offensive end of the ball recently for the Trojans.