USC Can’t Do a Follow-Up

USC old-timers nostalgic for the Sports Arena may be on the verge of receiving a reprieve.

The 46-year-old facility could serve as the location of a first-round National Invitation Tournament game. The Trojans’ performance Thursday night in a 73-61 loss to Oregon would seem to suggest that an NIT bid may be the best they have to hope for.

Four days after securing a seemingly momentous victory against Pacific 10 Conference-leading UCLA, USC failed to sustain its focus and intensity against the sub.-500 Ducks.

“We just came out flat,” junior guard Lodrick Stewart said. “It just seemed like we use so much energy playing big teams like that and come back not playing as hard. I don’t know why we came out like that. You could kind of tell when we were warming up that the energy level was down.”

One reason may have been a pregame injury to sophomore swingman Nick Young, who required 16 stitches on his buttocks after falling during warmups. Young played 35 minutes and scored 14 points but said the injury affected him “a little bit.”

Freshman guard Ryan Francis scored a career-high 18 points for the Trojans, who had difficulty penetrating with the same effectiveness they did against UCLA.

“They took away a lot of the drives we had against UCLA and consequently we had trouble scoring,” said USC Coach Tim Floyd, whose team seemed to miss injured guard Gabe Pruitt more than ever Thursday.

The Trojans also had trouble defending. Oregon made 55.8% of its shots and utilized an effective inside-outside game, with Malik Hairston, Aaron Brooks and Ray Schafer combining for 51 points. The trio had combined for only 18 last month in USC’s 84-78 victory in Eugene, Ore.

“Schafer’s a guy who hadn’t scored this year, and he wore us out,” Floyd said of the 7-foot center, whose 13 points were well over his 3.7 average.

The Ducks, who improved to 13-15 overall and 7-9 in the Pac-10, pulled to within a half-game of USC (16-10, 7-8) for sixth place in the conferencestandings. Thhe top six teams get a first-round bye in next month’s Pac-10 tournament.

USC, which took its last lead late in the first half on a layup by Francis but trailed by three points at halftime, pulled to within 63-59 with 3 minutes 21 seconds left on a driving layup by Dwayne Shackleford. The Trojans got the ball back with a chance to trim the deficit further, but freshman forward Keith Wilkinson’s tip-in attempt rolled out.

Oregon forward Jordan Kent then banked in a layup high off the backboard and, after Shackleford missed a jumper, Chamberlain Oguchi drained a three-pointer to make it 68-59 with 1:30 remaining and put the game out of reach.

Freshman forward RouSean Cromwell, making his first appearance since the Trojans’ victory over North Carolina on Dec. 21, played only two minutes early in the second half and was victimized by Schafer, who scored five consecutive points against him.

“He looked like a guy who had been out for two months and practiced for two days,” Floyd said of Cromwell. “They wore him out on the block and as a result I took him out.”

On one particular play, the Ducks lobbed the ball high over a leaping Cromwell to Schafer, who went in for an uncontested dunk.

“If I were 100% or even 80%, I would have picked it off or at least deflected it,” Cromwell said of the entry pass.

The NCAA tournament selection committee would probably consider this a bad loss for the Trojans considering that the Ducks entered the game with a Ratings Percentage Index figure of 169. The Trojans, who cracked the top 100 in the RPI figures this week at No. 98, face Oregon State on Saturday in the final scheduled game at the Sports Arena.

USC had been hoping for its first NCAA tournament bid in four years, but unless the Trojans win the Pac-10 tournament, their chances appear slim.

“We’re hanging on a thread now,” Stewart said. “I don’t think we should talk about the tournament. We have to just focus on the next game.”