USC basketball: Trojans lead Huskies at halftime, 32-24

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Not much went wrong for USC in the first half against Washington, and the team leads the Huskies 32-24 at halftime at the Bank of America Arena.

The Trojans got a huge boost from senior guard Dwight Lewis, who scored 16 first-half points on seven-of-nine shooting from the floor. He scored 12 of USC’s final 18 points to end the half, and fellow senior Marcus Johnson scored the other six.

Trailing 12-7, USC went on a 19-5 run to go up 26-17 midway with 5 minutes and 2 seconds left until halftime. The final bucket in that run was a putback layup by Lewis, and he roared as the nearly capacity Husky crowd stayed silent.

Johnson has done a fine job guarding Washington’s Quincy Pondexter, who has just five points on two-of-seven shooting from the floor. He also has two fouls.

This is Washington’s second lowest scoring first half of the season. It’s lowest was 19 points at Arizona State.

USC is shooting 13-of-30 (43%) from the floor. Washington is shooting 10-of-26 (39%) from the floor.

One key has been turnovers. Washington has nine while USC has just five.

But again, all of this seems out of character for Washington, a team that is 16-1 at home this season and has an 18.3-point margin of victory inside this building. The Huskies seem frustrated as USC is spreading the floor on offense and being very physical on defense. It seemed clear in the first half that the referees weren’t going to call touch fouls and the crowd showed its displeasure with a shower of deafening boos.

-- Baxter Holmes, reporting from Seattle