USC finishes regular season with upset win against No. 5 Arizona
It took them a while to get here but the USC Trojans are playing their best basketball of the season as we head toward mid-March. Andy Enfield’s program won four of their final five games of the season and punctuated that run on Saturday night with a 78-65 win over No. 5 Arizona to close out the regular season.
DJ Rodman scored a season-high 19 points and Kobe Johnson added 19 as well to lead the Trojans. Isaiah Collier had 16 points, five assists and four rebounds as USC found a way to get a big win on a night when leading scorer Boogie Ellis had just five points on 1-of-8 shooting.
Arizona might have been in a bit of letdown mode after clinching the Pac-12 regular season title with a big win at UCLA on Thursday, but USC deserved this one. The Trojans held the Wildcats’ top two scorers to just seven points combined. Leading scorer Caleb Love hit a shot 18 seconds into the game and didn’t score again, going 0-for-9 from the floor and 0-for-6 from three-point range the rest of the way. The Trojans also forced him into more turnovers (five) than he had rebounds and assists combined (four). No. 2 scorer Pelle Larson had just five points on 2-of-6 shooting. He also committed five of Arizona’s 18 turnovers as Kobe Johnson recorded six of USC’s 15 steals.
This is the third game in a row Rodman finished with double-digit points. That’s the longest streak of the season for the Washington State transfer. He also led the Trojans with seven rebounds in this one.
Bronny James was efficient in his time on the floor. In 20 minutes of action, he scored five points and grabbed six rebounds. His three near the end of the first half gave the Trojans a 34-30 lead after the first 20 minutes.
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The Trojans put together a five-possession run in the second have that helped swing this one for good. With free throws from Collier and Ellis, a three-pointer from Rodman and buckets from Collier and Johnson, USC scored on five-straight possessions from the 14:42 mark to the 12:10 mark of the second half. Big threes from Johnson and Rodman stopped both mini-runs Arizona used to try to get back into the game and over the final five minutes, Arizona never closed the USC lead to fewer than eight points.
Up Next for USC
The recent winning streak, which includes victories over Arizona and UCLA, moved USC up to the No. 9 seed for this week’s Pac-12 Tournament. The Trojans will open the tournament against No. 8 seed Washington on Wednesday at 12 pm at the T-Mobile Arena.
The winner of that opening game will take on No. 1 seed Arizona the following day at 12 pm.
The full tournament matchups include:
No. 5 UCLA vs No. 12 Oregon State – Wednesday 2:30 pm
No. 7 California vs No. 10 Stanford – Wednesday 6:00 pm
No. 6 Utah vs No. 11 Arizona State – Wednesday 8:30 pm
No. 4 Oregon will face the winner of UCLA/Oregon State
No. 2 Washington State will face the winner of Cal/Stanford
No. 3 Colorado will face the winner of Utah/Arizona State
