USC drops season opener 74-61 to Florida Gulf Coast
For much of Monday night’s men’s basketball game, the loudest sounds in the arena weren’t from DJ Mal-Ski. They came from the opposing bench.
Florida Gulf Coast cheers and excessive towel-waving on the bench dominated the noise as USC dropped its season opener 74-61 at Galen Center. The Trojans showed some life by cutting the Eagles’ lead to nine with a minute left, but it was too little too late.
“We just didn’t have it tonight,” said Head Coach Andy Enfield in a post-game press conference Monday. “They’re good players. We’ll get better. We have really good players on our team and they just had an off night as a collective group.”
Senior guard Boogie Ellis led USC with 19 points. Redshirt senior guard Drew Peterson added 7 points and 9 rebounds. Redshirt junior forward Joshua Morgan had 6 points, 9 rebounds and 7 blocks.
Enfield debuted a revamped starting lineup with four guards and one center, relying on guards a majority of the night. For the first time since the 2018-19 season, a Mobley brother was unavailable to play. The Trojans were going to play fast and shoot often from deep.
Instead, they turned the ball over 15 times, shot just under 16% from the 3-point line and were outrebounded 46-35.
“When you play four guards a lot, some of the guards are not used to going to the glass as much as they should,” Enfield said. “We’ve actually been rebounding the ball pretty well in our two scrimmages.”
Ellis acknowledged that it’s a tough transition as a guard to pay more attention to crashing the glass for rebounds. He pointed to some plays where rebounds were fought over by teammates, something Ellis believes can be fixed by communicating better.
“We got to do all the little things,” he said. “Make sure we’re boxing out, working together, communicating on defense … we just got to communicate and I feel like we just got to come together and know that this year we got to hold our hats on something different.”
Up by just one at halftime, USC collapsed in the final twenty minutes of the game.
The matchup was haunted by inefficiency on offense and a defense that allowed the Eagles to shoot 37.5% from three. The Trojans went without a field goal for nearly seven minutes in the second half, putting together more bricks than swishes.
In need of a second-half comeback, the Trojans’ offense simply never left the locker room.
Through the first 10 minutes, USC shot 30% from the field with more turnovers (6) than field goals made (4). The Trojans were outscored 17 to 5 across seven minutes in the second half as turnovers piled on and missed shots became a commonality.
Isolation basketball became USC’s go-to as the game slipped away.
“It looked like [the players] went back to some bad habits or did not play like they had been, so it was disappointing,” Enfield said. “We don’t have the luxury of having a dominant big guy scorer like we’ve had in the past.”
Meanwhile, Florida Gulf Coast extended its lead to as much as 15 with 9:20 left in the game and never looked back.
The Trojans relied on their defense early, holding Florida Gulf Coast without a basket for the first four minutes of the game. The Eagles even went scoreless between 13:06 and 9:36 in the first half as USC extended its lead.
But, nine turnovers in the first half hindered its rhythm offensively. The Trojans shot just 1-for-12 from three. Multiple scoring droughts left Enfield screaming on the sidelines.
“We had some turnovers that really hurt us because we went into a couple of droughts tonight offensively and we had some transition opportunities, some opportunities where we drove the lane and we didn’t convert,” Enfield said.
USC’s lack of size hurt them early. It struggled on the glass, giving up eight offensive rebounds in the first half leading to six Eagle points in the paint. Florida Gulf Coast also outscored the Trojans 18 to 12 in the paint.
“We’re going to take a lot from this game and better believe we’ll be ready Thursday,” Peterson said.
USC plays Alabama State next on Thursday at Galen Center.