In the final minute, it was hard to tell which was the home team.
Fans wearing orange outnumbered their cardinal counterparts inside LA’s Galen Center, standing and cheering a lob dunk that had pushed Illinois into triple digits.
In another demoralizing showing on its home court, USC was outclassed across the board Wednesday night. The No. 10 Fighting Illini were superior on offense, defense, and in bringing the noise during a 101–65 victory that represented the most lopsided loss ofcoach Eric Musselman’s two seasonswith the Trojans.
This was worse than a 30-point loss to Michigan and 29-pointsetback against Michigan Stateearlier this season as USC continued to struggle against the Big Ten’s upper echelon.
“Those teams, you know, if you don’t have your ‘A’ game,” Musselman said, “you’re not going to be able to compete with them and obviously we didn’t have a ‘C’ game tonight.”
Curiously, the Trojans (18–8 overall, 7–8 Big Ten) also continued a troubling pattern of playing worse at home this season. They have now dropped four games on their home court — as many as they have on the road. Two of the losses were to Northwestern and Washington, which have .500 or worse records.
“We haven’t played good basketball at home,” Musselman admitted. “We’ve got to figure out how we can play better basketball than what we have at home, and we can’t play like that offensively and defensively and give yourself a chance against a top-10 team in the country.”
The game’s opening play told the story of what was to come. Illinois center Tomislav Ivišić took a bounce pass for a dunk after USC counterpart Gabe Dynes got screened out of the way.
It wasa move the Trojans had gone over in their preparationbut were incapable of stopping. By halftime, USC was down 54–32 after having given up seven 3-pointers to the Illini (22–5, 13–3).
There was symmetry in that Illinois’ final basket came on an Ivišić lob dunk.
Source: California Post – Breaking California News, Photos & Videos
