Trojans Seem Ready to Turn the Corner

Despite their 9-1 record and No. 16 ranking--a drop of three slots from last week because of an overtime loss to Mississippi in Hawaii--the Trojans know they haven’t yet played their best basketball.

Sam Clancy thinks it’s time they did.

“We’ve started out slow, and I hope we’ve gotten those bad games behind us,” Clancy said after Sunday’s practice. “That second half against BYU is the best half of basketball we’ve played all year, coming from 18 points down.

“Now we should be getting Jeff [Trepagnier] back and some other guys healthy. We should start clicking on all cylinders.”

Clancy--who used the three games of the Yahoo! Sports Invitational to raise his scoring average to 17 points, second on the team to Brian Scalabrine’s 18.2--said the defensive effort USC had against Brigham Young in the second half is indicative of how the Trojans must approach the rest of their schedule.

“Everyone knows the defenses now,” Clancy said. “We know the offense will score enough points to win the game. But we have to play good defense. No terrible first halves, or anything. We have to play 40 minutes of basketball, which we haven’t done all year.

“These next two games [against Northwestern and Long Beach State], everybody has to play hard for 40 minutes. And then we’ll see the improvement on defense we need to see.”