USC Is Given Its Just Deserts

USC Coach Henry Bibby likes to talk about how much character his young team has shown this season, saying the Trojans have competed well in every game except for three.

Make that four.

USC was pummeled by Arizona State on Thursday night, 108-78, ending its feel-good three-game winning streak and any positive momentum the Trojans had created.

The Trojan players refused to speak with the media in the aftermath of the debacle in front of 10,104 at Wells Fargo Arena, their lone act of cohesion all night.

Bibby, though, spoke at length after USC had given up its most points since surrendering 111 to Stanford in 2000.

“This is just the fourth [non-competitive] game [out of 20], so that’s not a bad percentage,” Bibby said. “But it’s not a good game to have at this time. That’s the whole thing.

“We tried to pick it up with the press a little bit and get the energy going that way. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t work. Tonight wasn’t our night. We had one guy come to play. Desmon Farmer was the only guy to play tonight. We played no defense at all.”

While Farmer had a game-high 29 points and led the Trojans with six rebounds and two steals, the junior guard had no help from the other four starters, who combined for 17 points, eight rebounds and 18 fouls.

The Trojans had averaged 91.7 points and 12.3 steals while forcing 25.3 turnovers a game during the winning streak against Oregon, UCLA and Nevada Las Vegas, and it was the Craven twins, sophomores Derrick and Errick, who sparked the offense with their defensive quickness.

But against Arizona State, a team USC beat, 76-74, at the Sports Arena on Jan. 18, point guard Derrick and shooting guard Errick were nonexistent, combining for more fouls, 10, than points, eight.

With no defensive intensity, USC (10-10 overall, 5-6 in the Pacific 10 Conference) was atrocious on offense, turning the ball over 17 times, 13 in the first half. The Sun Devils (16-7, 8-4) picked Trojan pockets for eight steals, seven before halftime.

“We took them out of a lot of their offensive sets that they tried to run,” Arizona State Coach Rob Evans said after the Sun Devils had given him only his second win in 10 games against USC and scored their most points in a non-overtime game in his five seasons. “Our perimeter play has been pretty good and I thought our point guards really did a great job of attacking their press.”

The Sun Devil point guards also did a great job of exploiting the Trojans’ ballhandlers. Senior Curtis Millage, who led the Sun Devils with 27 points, disrupted Derrick Craven, pressuring the ball from the inbounds pass all the way up the floor. As a result, the frazzled Trojans had to settle for jump shots against a man-to-man defense.

With their shots failing to fall -- they made only four field goals in the first 16-plus minutes -- the Trojans were blitzed by the Sun Devils and found themselves behind by a game-high 34 points, 48-14, following an Ike Diogu basket with 3:49 remaining in the first half.

“We jumped on them from the start,” said Diogu, who scored 26 points on 11-for-13 shooting. “We didn’t give them a chance from the jump.”

So impressed was Bibby with the freshman center that he called Diogu “the best player in the Pac-10. He gets my vote for MVP. The kid is unstoppable.

“But again, we didn’t play defense. If we score 78 and they score their average [74.7], we win the ballgame.

“We just didn’t have it. The ball even looked heavy to me.”

Some would say that’s just the weight of knowing a game at top-ranked Arizona is on the horizon, along with the sobering possibility of getting swept in the desert.