Dunk City loses its top gun


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When center Dewayne Dedmon announced Wednesday that he was forgoing his senior season and entering the NBA draft, you couldn’t help but wonder what new head coach Andy Enfield thought of the move. Many believe there is a very small chance that Dedmon, who averaged 6.7 points and 7.0 rebounds per game last season, will […]

Taking a closer look at both basketball teams


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The last few weeks brought a merciful end to a tumultuous period for both the men’s and women’s basketball teams. After the dismissal of former men’s head coach Kevin O’Neill and the resignation of women’s coach Michael Cooper, Athletic Director Pat Haden was hard at work, bringing in Florida Gulf Coast University’s Andy Enfield to […]

Monica adds to Vavic legacy


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The daughter sat and listened to the father. This was May 2008 and Monica Vavic was in the lobby of a Northern California hotel near the Stanford University campus, the site where the USC women’s water polo team had fallen to heavily favored UCLA 6-3 in the NCAA championship game earlier that day. Her dad, […]

Trojans’ depth issues will be costly


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Though a contradictory figure of speech by definition, oxymorons infiltrate our everyday language. We have the tried-and-true cliches — overused literary paradoxes like “deafening silence” and “sweet sorrow.” We also spread them unwittingly at every turn, with common verbiage such as “act naturally” and “dull roar.” After scanning the 2013 football depth chart released last […]

USC men’s tennis team deserves more credit


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I was browsing USCTrojans.com looking for column topics yesterday morning and saw the usual suspects: football, basketball, football and football. But then I saw a headline that said “Trojan Tennis Takes on the World.” I was intrigued, mainly because I had forgotten all about USC tennis, specifically the men’s team. The Trojans have won four […]

NCAA’s Oregon ruling will fall short


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In all honesty, I shouldn’t have been so surprised. Like many USC fans, I always keep an eye out for any schools that become subject to investigation by the NCAA and its Committee on Infractions. Naturally, as some of the NCAA’s most spurned victims, Trojan fans can’t help but become intrigued when other schools become […]

Country grieves after bombings in Boston


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Last weekend I wandered into The Artform Studio in the Downtown Arts District. It doubles as a record store and a place to get a haircut, which sounds like a strange combination, but it works. As Stevie Wonder belted out “Do I Do” on an old-school cassette player, I explored every inch of the studio’s […]

Women’s hoops begins a new era


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The line of reasoning for hiring Cynthia Cooper-Dyke as USC’s next women’s basketball coach is pretty simple. She’s an alumna and a “USC basketball icon,” as Athletic Director Pat Haden put it last Thursday when the hire was announced. That is, of course, true. If there was a Mount Rushmore for USC women’s basketball, Cooper-Dyke’s […]

Kessler shows he’s the man for the job


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When handicapping Arizona State’s three-way quarterback competition last fall, most onlookers narrowed their gaze to strong-armed sophomore Mike Bercovici and fleet-footed freshman Michael Eubank. Redshirt junior Taylor Kelly only entered the discussion as the safe, yet altogether vanilla, fallback — a game manager who could split the difference between the other two quarterbacks’ strengths. Coming […]

Spring game gives USC a chance to start over


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It seems like just yesterday I was writing about the 2012 spring game. National championship hopes were high, as was talk about a Heisman Trophy for Matt Barkley. The stars were aligned for the Trojans, to say the least. A year later, things couldn’t be more different. There is no quarterback certainty. There aren’t really […]