On their way
By Jeff Platt
This title refers to the USC Men’s BBall team…with an impressive win tonight AT Arizona, the Trojans now have nine Pac-10 wins, with three games still left to play…therefore, I can say they are on their way to the NCAA Tournament. One more win for the rest of the season should lock things up for a postseason berth. And boy, was last night’s win impressive!!!! ‘SC jumped out early on UofA, leading by 16 at one point in the first half. The team then held strong when the Wildcats made their comeback with around 9 minutes left in the game…at one point even cutting the lead to three!!!!
When Davon Jefferson went down with an ankle injury (landing awkwardly after an absolutely sick dunk by ‘Zona star Jerryd Bayless), things didn’t look good. With Taj Gibson picking up his 4th foul of the game, things looked even worse. But, Jefferson was able to come back. Keith Wilkinson is also playing very well in reserve. A key concern the whole season for this team has and will continue to be DEPTH. Let’s take a look at the rotation….
Guards—Angelo Johnson, Dwight Lewis, OJ Mayo, (the not at full-strength but good to see him back) Daniel Hackett, and maybe Ryan Wetherell for a couple minutes off the bench.
Forwards—Davon Jefferson, Taj Gibson, Keith Wilkinson
Here you have an 8-man rotation. Three of these eight are true freshmen…four of ‘em sophomores…Keith Wilkinson is the only upper-classman, he’s a junior.
Now sure this bodes well for the future of Trojan basketball…and an 8-man rotation should suffice for the tournament…but when you look a little more closely, and take Wetherell out of the equation AND consider the fact Hackett is no where close to 100% yet—you run into the threat of having to use 6-7 guys in the rotation. This is why it is SO IMPORTANT for ‘SC to win games NOW….so there’s not much pressure in the Pac-10 Tournament, when you have to play a game every day.
ASU, Cal, and Stanford remain…one win gets a tourney birth, two wins take pressure off the Pac-10 tourney and probably puts ‘SC in the top 25, and three wins is just HUGE!!!
Thx for reading
-Jeff
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