Tough defense gives USC basketball team something to hold onto

Reporting from Pullman, Wash. — 

Coaches sell their idea on how to win all the time. If players believe, they buy. If not, they move on.

When USC hired Kevin O’Neill last June as its basketball coach, his pitch was clear: “We’re going to be a great defensive team,” he said.

Not “try to be.” Not “strive to be.”

But “going to be,” as if no other option existed.

“He demands it,” USC guard Mike Gerrity said. “And if you want to play, you’re going to buy into the system. If you’re not playing defense, you’re not going to be on the floor.”

His players have bought in, no doubt:

* Entering Saturday’s game against Washington State, the Trojans own the nation’s fourth-best scoring defense, giving up 56.6 points a game.

* Five Pacific 10 Conference teams have tied or set season lows in points against the Trojans, including California (63), Washington (61), Stanford (49), UCLA (46) and Arizona State (37).

* USC has allowed 1,416 points through its first 25 games this season, its fewest during that span in nearly 60 years.

“There’s times we’ve been as good as any team I’ve ever coached, and we don’t have great individual defenders,” O’Neill said. “We have a great feel for team concepts.”

Arizona State Coach Herb Sendek said USC is “engineered” to give up almost nothing with its athletic and long lineup.

UCLA Coach Ben Howland said the Trojans’ veterans are the key, along with the defensive techniques they learned from former coach Tim Floyd.

But O’Neill said his defensive concepts were “totally foreign” to the current players compared to what Floyd taught.

“Tim was a big hands-off guy,” he said. “I’m big into hands-on, foul, keep fouling and they’ll quit calling it. I’m big into physical play.”

O’Neill’s overall style is simple: Aggressive man-to-man defense with players contesting every shot, pass and drive, knowing if they get beat, a teammate is there.

“We always talk about, one guy is guarding the ball and four guys are helping him guard the ball,” O’Neill said.

Playing up to O’Neill’s demands can be trying.

In practice, where the focus is on defense 75% of the time, if one player isn’t up to par, O’Neill stops everything to remind the player what he wants. “I want you to be perfect,” he’ll often say.

In a game, O’Neill will pull a player for the same reason, as he did with Dwight Lewis against Georgia Tech: “I didn’t think he was guarding well enough,” O’Neill said.

Said Lewis: “He’ll get on you when he needs to get on you and he’ll talk to you when he needs to talk to you. He’s got a good way of showing us.”

Another O’Neill tactic is telling his team that because it’s “offensively challenged,” defense is USC’s only hope to win.

“It looks like every possession is important to them,” Washington State Coach Ken Bone said.

With five games left, USC (16-9 overall, 8-5 in Pac-10) is sitting a half game out of first place in the conference.

But for O’Neill, a lot of it comes back to the selling. He sells recruits on the tough defense they’ll learn that will help them win and maybe make it to the NBA. He sells this team that defense will keep them in any game and in the hunt for a league title.

He believes his pitch because he has to.

“Players aren’t dumb,” he said. “They know whether you know what you’re talking about or not. If they don’t respect what you’re talking about, you can sell them all day long. They better be able to see some results.”

This year, they are. Just like everyone else.

baxter.holmes@latimes.com