USC Gets an ‘L’ for Effort Against Cal

The good news for USC on Saturday was that the Trojans played with enough heart to give California a scare. The bad news was that they still fell short as the Bears outlasted USC down the stretch to win, 85-69, and hand the Trojans their third consecutive loss.

USC shook off a week of distractions that included the firing of Charlie Parker and the unexplained absence of center Avondre Jones, to give the talented Bears all they could handle until Cal outscored the Trojans, 30-15, over the final eight minutes before 6,578 at Harmon Gym.

USC interim Coach Henry Bibby kept the Bears guessing with a mixture of zones and man-to-man defenses, but Cal’s depth and combination of Shareef Abdur-Rahim (29 points and 11 rebounds) and Tremaine Fowlkes (20 points) was too much for the Trojans to overcome.

With the loss, USC dropped under .500 for the first time this season at 11-12 and 4-7 in the Pacific 10 Conference. Cal improved to 13-7, 7-4.

“There’s not too much good I can get from the game because the bottom line is that we lost,” said Stais Boseman, who had 20 points, four rebounds and four assists. “But we gave a great effort as a team and we can hold our heads up. We were undermanned, playing without our starting center, but we gave it all we had. I was cramping up the last six minutes of the game.”

Without Jones in the middle, Jaha Wilson stepped up with his third consecutive double-double and his 10th of the season with 18 points and 10 rebounds.

After discussing a possible boycott in support of Parker and then losing by 30 points at Stanford on Thursday, the Trojan players showed character against Cal with an inspired performance that Bibby called a “spiritual victory.”

“The guys responded today and played an unbelievable game,” said Bibby, who replaced Parker on Wednesday. “[Cal] is the most talented team in the Pac-10 and we stepped it up to a level where we made them worried.”

For most of the game, USC played Cal even and twice made runs that had the Trojans thinking upset. The biggest rally came after the Trojans trailed, 48-36, early in the second half and then outscored the Bears, 12-2, to trail, 50-48, with 10 minutes remaining.

With 8:12 remaining, the Trojans closed to within 55-54, on a steal and breakaway dunk by Wilson. Then fatigue took over as Cal pulled away thanks to several USC mental errors, including a non-shooting intentional foul by Boseman, a technical on Wilson for illegally touching a Cal inbounds pass and a USC lane violation on a missed Cal free throw.

“Five or six plays put us at a deficit,” Bibby said. “Without those plays, it’s a different basketball game.”

A bright spot for USC was the all-around play of freshman guard Damion Dawson, who made his first start of the season and was praised by Bibby for his defense. Dawson played 31 minutes and made four of seven shots to finish with nine points and six rebounds.

“For most of the season, I had limited playing time and when I used to get in there I would try to do too much,” said Dawson, who became a starter after a struggling Cameron Murray asked to come off the bench. “The stuff that has happened lately has been tough on me. I’ve only been here a year but look at what has already happened. [George] Raveling was the first to start recruiting me and then after he got in his accident, Parker took over. Now it’s Bibby, and that’s kind of a tough transition.”