Plenty of roadwork ahead

It is an early season schedule befitting the likes of Lipscomb or Kennesaw (Ga.) State, some little-known Division I school forced to hit the road to fulfill the needs of power programs that stockpile November home games.

After opening the season against Mercer on Saturday at the Galen Center, USC will not return to its home floor until playing host to Oklahoma on Nov. 29, six games later.

The Trojans, of course, are hardly an unknown; they’re a major conference team ranked No. 18 in the Associated Press preseason poll. Yet they’re the only ranked team to play fewer than two of its first six games at home.

Fourth-ranked Kansas is playing its first six games at Allen Fieldhouse. No. 17 Arizona is playing five of its first six games at the McKale Center. Second-ranked UCLA is playing four of its first six games at Pauley Pavilion.

USC will travel to play at the Citadel and at South Carolina next week before playing three games in the Anaheim Classic over Thanksgiving weekend at the Anaheim Convention Center.

“It’s unusual, but it’s what we chose to do,” Trojans Coach Tim Floyd said. “A lot of it was given the fact that we’re going to South Carolina in a return game and picking up a road game at Citadel because it made more sense to go out there and play a couple [of games]. The tournament in Anaheim just fell that way during the schedule.

“It’s OK. It’s fine. We’re not going to look for excuses. We’ve got a tough road ahead of us and it wouldn’t matter if we’re playing five of six at home right now.”

Rumors that freshman guard O.J. Mayo slugged sophomore guard Daniel Hackett during a pickup game in September have sparked a small furor in Hackett’s native Italy, where a report in the newspaper Il Resto del Carlino said “the punch was so devastating that the first doctor that saw him said he could not have been playing again.”

Readers in a fan forum wrote that Mayo “has a wood head” and implored Hackett not to worry because Mayo would be leaving USC for the NBA draft in June. One reader went so far as to demand an NCAA investigation, claiming that USC coaches were involved in a cover-up.

Hackett and Mayo insist that Hackett’s broken jaw resulted from an inadvertent elbow. Hackett is expected to have a wire removed from his jaw today and return later this month.

Sophomore forward Taj Gibson returned to practice Thursday and said his sprained ankle would be fine for the Trojans’ opener Saturday, but junior forward RouSean Cromwell was sidelined for a fourth consecutive day with a leg injury.

ben.bolch@latimes.com