If nothing else, USC men’s basketball knows how to give a game an exciting finish.

With four and a half minutes left to play Saturday night, senior forward Ezra Ausar sank a free throw to extend the Trojans’ (16-6, 5-6 Big Ten) lead to 74-57. A 17-point lead over Rutgers (9-13, 2-9) — a team riding a four-game losing streak and sitting at 14th in the Big Ten — seemed to indicate USC would cruise to the finish line for a much-needed victory, especially after a heartbreaking loss to Iowa (15-5, 5-4) just a few days prior.

Four minutes and an 18-4 Rutgers run later, the Trojans found themselves clinging onto a mere 3-point lead — and, after graduate guard Chad Baker-Mazara missed a jumper with five seconds left, facing the possibility of overtime despite having led by 19 points at their peak.

However, as Scarlet Knight junior guard Tariq Francis looked for a play at halfcourt, Baker-Mazara poked the ball out of his hands and dove onto it as time expired, sealing a 78-75 win and avoiding what could have been a catastrophic loss for a Trojan squad already teetering on the edge of the NCAA Tournament bubble.

“Look, we won a Big Ten game,” Head Coach Eric Musselman said in a postgame news conference. “For 36 minutes, we had a lead in the game, which is hard to do in the Big Ten. Obviously, our last three minutes, we did not play very well at all.”

Saturday’s win marked USC’s third straight game decided by one possession and seventh on the season. The Trojans are 6-1 in such contests, and Musselman said that experiencing tight games would benefit his team down the stretch as they prepare for March.

“I’d rather be 5-1 and win this one by 12 … but now we have a bunch of stuff that we can clean up and get better at,” Musselman said.

Usual suspects show out for USC

USC controlled the game from out of the gate, hovering around a 10-point lead for much of the first half, largely thanks to the efforts of sophomore forward Jacob Cofie, who made all five of his shots in the half. Though he cooled down later on, shooting just 1-for-6 in the second, Cofie finished with 15 points and 10 rebounds for his fifth double-double of the season, adding three assists and three blocks.

Cofie was one of three Trojans to score double-digit points, along with Ausar and Baker-Mazara. Ausar enjoyed a similarly efficient night, making 6-of-8 attempts from the field and 9-of-11 from the line to finish with 21 points; he drew a game-high eight fouls, contributing to his eighth game of the season with 10 or more free-throw attempts.

“I’m just having the mindset of being the most visible person out there,” Ausar said in a postgame news conference. “Today was just the day to pick it up.”

Baker-Mazara got off to a slow start Saturday, missing his first three shots from beyond the arc and going more than 11 minutes before scoring his first bucket. Nevertheless, he ended the night with 17 points — right around his team-leading average of 18.8 — thanks to a much-improved 4-for-7 performance in the second half.

Aside from Baker-Mazara’s six attempts, USC was largely dormant from 3-point land, taking a season-low 12 shots from deep. Instead, the Trojans relied heavily on players like Cofie and Ausar to drive to the basket, racking up 24 points in the paint in the first half alone and 36 overall.

Midseason additions produce varying results

While grappling with injuries to several key players — most recently junior guard Jordan Marsh, who missed his third straight game Saturday — Musselman has looked to fill in the gaps with his squad’s two newest players: graduate guard Kam Woods, who was acquired via the transfer portal in December, and freshman guard Alijah Arenas, who made his debut Jan. 21 against Northwestern (10-12, 2-9) after missing the start of the season while recovering from an injury.

Fresh off a spectacular 33-point performance Wednesday, Woods came back down to Earth against the Scarlet Knights, returning to his role as a playmaker rather than a shot-taker. Woods attempted just three shots all night — all of which came in the first half — to finish with 8 points, tacking on nine rebounds and four assists.

“We need him on the floor,” Musselman said of Woods. “I’m super impressed that he only took three shots in 38 minutes. … He’s got basketball maturity.”

On the other hand, Arenas has largely struggled in what continues to be a slow start to the five-star recruit’s collegiate career. He did snap an 0-for-11 drought from deep with his first two 3-pointers as a Trojan, but ended up with just 9 points on a 3-for-9 clip after seeing limited minutes in the second half due to foul trouble.

“I’m hopeful that, with each game, he gets more and more comfortable with everything,” Musselman said of Arenas. “You can see the incredible potential.”

Arenas and Woods combined for six of USC’s 17 turnovers — 12 of which came in the second half, allowing Rutgers to claw its way back into the game. Across the game’s final 20 minutes, the Scarlet Knights scored 18 points off turnovers and took 20 more shots than the Trojans, a pattern that would have spelled disaster for Musselman’s squad had it not built a double-digit lead early on.

Though USC managed to escape Galen Center with a win, it cannot afford a similar late-game collapse against any of the tougher competition that awaits down the stretch. Before the game, ESPN’s Joe Lunardi projected the Trojans as one of the last four at-large teams in the NCAA Tournament field, and a one-possession win over one of the conference’s weakest teams won’t do them any favors.

USC will get a chance to add a quality win to its resume Tuesday night, when the Trojans host Indiana (15-7, 6-5) at 7 p.m.