USC loses on senior day

After routing Oregon earlier in the week, the men’s basketball team fell to Oregon State 67-62 in the last home game of the season Saturday.

Although the Beavers stormed out to a 10-point lead, the win wasn’t out of reach for the Trojans in the second half. The team chipped down the lead throughout the second, and a 3-pointer by Jonah Mathews secured a 1-point 56-55 lead with just under four minutes left to play. The 11-point swing was mainly fueled by Mathews’ accuracy, while the rest of the team struggled to score.

Much of the Trojans’ difficulty came from an inability to finish open shots. Usually a team leader in scoring, junior Nick Rakocevic finished the game with only 4 points. A lone standout in the game was the performance of freshman Kevin Porter Jr., who posted his first career double-double with 11 points and 10 rebounds on the night. But the rest of the team struggled to complete shots, especially from long distance.

“We were 6-for-25 [from 3-point range] when the game mattered,” Enfield said. “Our guys had open looks. You have to shoot better to beat a good team like Oregon State.”

The loss was the last game at Galen Center for the senior class, but it was met by a scattered crowd, with only 3,590 fans in attendance. That number was the second-lowest crowd in the 13 years since Galen Center opened — only a handful more than the record-low of 3,552 from 2014.

The lack of intensity in the stands mirrored a lack of continuity on the court, as the Trojans shot 44 percent from the field. Enfield shook his head as he studied the stat sheet after the game, regretfully admitting that his team simply missed a lot of shots. For seniors Bennie Boatwright and Shaqquan Aaron, the final home game was an emotional moment, and making it a more difficult loss to handle.

“It’s all good — it’s all part of basketball,” Boatwright said. “You win some, you lose some. Everybody in the Galen Center who’s supported me for the last four years, I’m extremely grateful.”

After the loss, the Trojans are now 15-13 on the season, walking the line of a losing record in conference play with an 8-7 record in the Pac-12. A close loss to Oregon State, which is ranked second in the conference, wasn’t necessarily a poor result on paper, but the team failed to finish a game that they could have won, a theme throughout this season. For Enfield, the team’s up-and-down performance points primarily resulted from lack of leadership, especially after point guard Jordan McLaughlin graduated.

“If you look at championship-level teams, there’s great leadership,” Enfield said. “In the bigger picture, certain guys just need to be able to play with a more even temperament. Either you’re successful or you fail. Everybody fails. You need to grind it out and work hard and be a leader. That’s what great players do, and that’s what great teams have.”

Although this weekend marked the team’s last at Galen Center for the season, the Trojans have two more road trips to complete the regular season — one to Utah and one to Colorado. But first, they’ll have to head to Westwood to face crosstown rival UCLA on Thursday.