Drought Doesn’t End a Moment Too Soon

Jim Saia has found his messages of encouragement carrying more resonance in practice the last few days after USC won its first Pacific 10 Conference game Saturday following five consecutive defeats.

“You kept telling the guys to keep fighting, but now it’s like, my gosh, I didn’t know what I was going to tell them this week if we came in 0-6,” the interim Trojan coach acknowledged Tuesday, three days after his team improved to 8-9 overall and 1-5 in conference play with its 98-94 victory over Arizona State.

“One and five and 0-6 is like miles apart for this group.”

The sense of relief was especially palpable among freshman guards Nick Young and Gabriel Pruitt, who might have begun to wonder whether they were going to be sophomores before USC won a conference game.

“We had been waiting for that for a long time,” said Young, who scored a career-high 22 points against the Sun Devils on seven-for-11 shooting. “It felt like a playoff game or a championship game.”

Said Pruitt, who made 11 of 12 free throws and finished with 14 points: “We’ve been waiting for that one win to get us going and we got it, so I think that’s going to get us rolling.”

Young and Pruitt are two reasons Trojan fans have to be optimistic about the Tim Floyd era, which doesn’t officially begin until the 2005-06 season. But the freshmen also help put USC at least on equal footing with California (8-7, 1-4), which brings a three-game losing streak into the Sports Arena on Thursday.

“He’s coming up big as a freshman,” Saia said of Young, who is averaging 15.0 points in conference play, tied with sophomore guard Lodrick Stewart for the team lead. “You’d think he was a senior out there.”

Pruitt has handed the point-guard duties with the skill and grace of a veteran, leading the conference with 2.06 steals per game and ranking ninth with 3.71 assists.