Without Mayo, Floyd’s sub menu seems a bit dry

First of all, I really like USC basketball Coach Tim Floyd, but I worry about the bum.

If you’ve seen the way he dresses, you know what I’m talking about. He also needs a haircut, or the Beatles look to come back into style.

But as really good guys go, this appears to be one, and almost every coach who I’ve really liked around here has been sent packing. So when I see him goofing up, or for that matter goofing off, I’m concerned.

I mention this now because Saturday they were charging eight bucks to park and another five to enter the Galen Center to watch O.J. Mayo sit on the bench the entire game.

Mayo is the biggest thing to happen to USC basketball -- maybe a dad and a son out there making the trek downtown figuring this would be the night to catch his act because there didn’t figure to be a huge crowd for Fresno Pacific.

Floyd never mentions a thing in the newspaper that he intends to play only his benchwarmers, and the Trojans roll around on the floor and lose by 21 to the NAIA Sunbirds. Thanks for the memories.

I’m guessing Floyd has a good reason for ripping off people, so I call him Monday and I’m told he’s golfing in the desert. So I figure Mike Garrett is already fed up, but then I get word Floyd will be back.

I check on Tuesday. Floyd shows up for work.

“First time in 30 years, and it was for the golf team to raise funds,” Floyd cries, and what a thrill it must have been for the other members in his foursome to hear the hacker talk about the development of his bench.

It cost me eight bucks to park to see Floyd. We sit down in his office. He doesn’t offer any refreshments, which is good, because I’m down to my last dollar.

“It was an exhibition game against Fresno Pacific,” Floyd huffs. “I know it’s unheard of to play an exhibition game nine games into the season, but if we were playing it in the fall -- what would we have done? We would have played everybody. . . . “

“Exactly,” I say. “Mayo and the rest of the Trojan starters would have at least been on the court, the subs getting their playing time too, all with the understanding that this is what happens in an exhibition game before the season starts. Someone comes to a Trojan game these days, it’s to see Mayo -- and then maybe they fall in love with some of your other players.”

“Maybe I should’ve taken that into consideration,” Floyd says, “but I think our fan base also wants to know who Mamadou Diarra is. He’s only practiced one day . . . “

“So let me get this straight, you’re charging people to see Mamadou Diarra’s second day on the court? Price go up for his third day?”

“If I don’t throw him out there,” Floyd says, “and get a sense of who he is . . .”

“Sorry to interrupt again, but you’re the guy who recruited him, so I would imagine you already have a sense of who he is.”

“I’ll tell you what, our bench isn’t very good,” Floyd says.

“Looked pretty good the other night with your five starters sitting on it.”

NOW I know what you’re thinking, but we were having fun. Well, at least one of us was having some fun.

Floyd says, “we had our reasons” for ripping off the public, so I let him tick them off.

He says his team was too young to play an exhibition game before the season began, the time needed to prepare them for play. He says he didn’t want to get any of his starters hurt in a game that didn’t count, so he didn’t play them against Fresno Pacific.

He says it was good for the starters to cheer on their backups since their backups spend much of their time cheering for them. At this point I closed my eyes and he began to sound like Gene Hackman in “Hoosiers.”

He says, “it was the right thing to do,” because of what Fresno Pacific Coach Jim Saia did while holding down the USC basketball job before Floyd arrived.

“I don’t totally agree it was a rip-off,” Floyd says. “You’ve always got a group of fans sitting there and saying, what if they played this guy or that guy.

“And you’ve got players sitting there thinking they should be playing more. Plus their parents. Now we have a gauge on how good they are.”

“You sure do,” I say, “and now they and their parents know they really do stink and belong on the bench.”

“I didn’t say that,” Floyd says with a hearty laugh, his job a lot easier now that no one can complain when it comes to playing time.

“So how many of these seven benchwarmers who played against Fresno Pacific are here on scholarship?” I ask.

“Five,” Floyd says.

“So five kids on scholarship to a big school like USC get thumped by 21 points to a little old NAIA school? Who is doing the recruiting around here?”

“I think at the end of the day our fans would like us to be a national-caliber team,” he says, already knowing how “Hoosiers” ends. “We can’t do that without a bench, and those kids have to get on the floor and have some game experience to help us later on.”

The teasing complete, the talk took a turn toward his starters and just how good they might be by season’s end -- because it’s obvious now they’re not going to get any help off the bench.

“We’re very talented, we’re young and we play hard, but not always smart,” Floyd says. “But it will change, I tell you, it will change.

“I believe our upside as the season goes on is higher than most of the teams in the country. This team can be pretty darn good.”

Maybe even good enough to one day beat a NAIA opponent.

“You know what?” Floyd says with a big grin. “I’d love to win the national championship, just so I could stand up there and tell everyone we won it because of that exhibition game and what it meant to our bench.”

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T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com. For previous columns by Simers, go to latimes.com/simers.