NCAA tournament still could be in the balance

They’ve played a strong schedule. They’ve held their own in the formidable Pacific 10 Conference. They play four of their last six regular-season games at home.

There are several reasons to believe the USC Trojans are in good shape for an NCAA tournament berth with three weeks to go before the Pac-10 tournament.

There are also several reasons for USC fans to worry.

The Trojans head into the final stretch without much of a bench in the wake of an injury to sophomore guard Daniel Hackett. They’ve had trouble winning at home, where they are 6-5. And they can’t erase that season-opening loss to Mercer.

“All I know is that we tried to play the strongest schedule we could possibly play, and we’ll see,” said Coach Tim Floyd, whose team had four-point losses to Kansas and Memphis, teams that appear bound for top seedings in the NCAA tournament.

At 15-9 overall and 6-6 in the Pac-10, the Trojans have a solid Ratings Percentage Index figure of 35, according to this week’s official tabulation released by the NCAA. They are in a three-way tie with Arizona State and Arizona for fourth place in the Pac-10, which still has eight teams in contention for a tournament berth.

How many teams should the selection committee take from the Pac-10?

“Probably six or seven, but you can never be so sure with the NCAA,” sophomore forward Taj Gibson said.

Gibson said that falling short of the NCAA tournament “would be real difficult because there was so much hype coming into the season, people predicting us to go” deep in the tournament.

Even though Oregon ranks second in the Pac-10 in scoring and is much more of a fast-paced team than UCLA, Floyd said playing his three perimeter players 40 minutes Thursday against the Ducks was “absolutely an option because we just did it in the last game.”

Floyd said he would emphasize transition defense to make Oregon play as much of a half-court game as possible, and USC freshman point guard Angelo Johnson said he would employ a slow-it-down approach on offense.

“I’m going to walk the ball up some to keep my breath and just try to keep them out of transition and slow their game down,” said Johnson, one of four Trojans who played 40 minutes against the Bruins on Sunday.

Freshman guard O.J. Mayo might have picked a good time to have his worst performance of the season. One NBA executive said the freshman guard’s four-point, 10-turnover game against UCLA wouldn’t hurt his draft stock “because every decision-maker that matters was at the [NBA] All-Star game” in New Orleans.

“It only becomes a bad box score because no one was there,” the executive said.

Nonetheless, the executive said Mayo’s draft stock had slipped and projected him to be selected late in the lottery, which encompasses the first 14 picks.

“What hurts O.J. more than anything is there are other guys in the Pac-10 playing so well,” the executive said. “[Arizona’s] Jerryd Bayless is having a much better year than him. And he’s not beating out other freshmen like Eric Gordon, Derrick Rose and Michael Beasley.”

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ben.bolch@latimes.com