USC Gets Quality Win, 76-61, Over Santa Barbara

Maybe the Trojans can play their best basketball only with their backs to the wall. This is the final week of the regular season, and USC is hanging on to its NCAA tournament hopes by its fingernails.

On Thursday the Trojans played like the desperate team they are and the kind of team they can be in pounding Santa Barbara, 76-61, before 1,812 at the Sports Arena.

USC seniors Jessica Cheeks, Rometra Craig, Tiffany Hicks and Ebony Hoffman played in their final home games. Hoffman got the 39th double-double of her career with 15 points and 10 rebounds, and Craig had 12 points. Freshman Jamie Hagiya made five of six three-point shots and had a career-best 15 points.

“It was extremely important to have a quality win over a quality nonconference opponent,” USC Coach Chris Gobrecht said. “We’ve had those near misses against those great teams. Santa Barbara is a quality team and we need the Ws. And I was very happy for the seniors to have a good memory in their final game at home.”

More important, USC (15-11) controlled the game from the outset, using speed on offense and a swarming defense to end the Gauchos’ nine-game winning streak. By the 11:29 mark of the first half, the Trojans were sailing, 26-10, and led, 45-26, at halftime. USC led by as many as 23 points in the second half.

Santa Barbara (19-6) got 23 points from Lindsay Taylor and 19 from Kristen Mann, but no other Santa Barbara player had more than five.

“We knew we had an edge in speed and they had the edge in height,” Hoffman said. “That was the tradeoff, and we won on our tradeoff. That was the key to the game, our quickness to the ball and our aggressiveness on defense.”

Santa Barbara has been to every NCAA tournament since 1997, the last year USC was in the tournament, and is favored to represent the Big West Conference again this year. First- and second-round games will be played at Santa Barbara.

But any NCAA stay will be a short one if Coach Mark French sees more efforts like the one on Thursday.

“You always take a risk, from my perspective, when you play a [late-season nonconference] game like this and something like this happens to you,” French said.

“It can throw your confidence off. We had been playing real well the past few weeks, but we didn’t play that well tonight.”

The 45 points were the most Santa Barbara has given up in a first half this season. And that’s saying something considering ranked powers Texas Tech, Purdue and Ohio State were among the five teams that had beaten the Gauchos before Thursday.