Isaiah Collier has 13 points, seven assists and no turnovers, Boogie Ellis has 15 points, eight rebounds and seven assists and the Trojans hold off the Golden Bears, 82-74, to avoid an 0-3 start to Pac-12 play.
LOS ANGELES — This was a spark that could start a fire, a spark loud enough to ignite a sleepy post-New Years’ crowd at the Galen Center, flying from the fingertips of a racing Isaiah Collier.
Well, racing Isaiah Collier is redundant, really, because it’s simply what he does. The USC freshman switches gears faster than most players in the country, a truly electric talent; but talent doesn’t help your team win, as head coach Andy Enfield has said, if it’s inefficient talent. And it had been largely inefficient for a month, a teenager still figuring out the collegiate game, that gear-shift stuck somewhere between sport and eco mode as turnovers mounted and drives to the rim stalled.
But in an 82-74 victory over Cal on Wednesday night, on the heels of a five-losses-in-six-games stretch, Collier seemed to find a true balance between power and poise. He spun through the paint like a whirling dervish, kicking passes out to shooters, nary a bad read coming from improved vision. And when he hurtled down the court in the middle of the first half off a turnover, fellow freshman Bronny James creeping alongside him in a two-on-one, he let a pass fly with calculated intentions.
James soared, caught it and dunked.
It was an alley-oop that jolted the arena to life, and the kind of play that filled in a crude outline of what this USC team (7-7 overall, 1-2 Pac-12) could be, their two top recruits connecting on some transition magic. After shooting and ball-control issues had tanked the majority of their December and cast a prying eye on Enfield’s offensive system, USC moved in tremendous pace with Collier and senior Boogie Ellis swinging Wednesday, racking up a season-best 29 assists.
Enfield didn’t mince words, postgame – he was tired, the coach said, of seeing turnovers with no ball movement. With no player movement. It was a point of emphasis in recent practices, after months of unkempt offensive basketball, to clean up and generate more flow.
“We’re at the point now – you keep turning the ball over, you take tough shots, you don’t move yourself, player movement, you just come out,” Enfield said. “And sit on the bench for a while.”
They swarmed in transition and hummed in the halfcourt. Late in the first half, after a James bucket, Collier leaked out for an and-one bully of a finish through contact, and seconds later a James trap forced a turnover that ended in an Ellis dunk. Off-ball screens into handoffs got Collier and other perimeter guards going downhill; it seemed to free Collier of self-inflicted mental shackles. He finished with seven assists and no turnovers, and fed shooters like DJ Rodman (a timely 11 points and 3-for-6 shooting from 3-point range) and Harrison Hornery (2 for 3 from behind the arc after a brutal start) for wide-open looks from outside.
The greatest beneficiary of all, though, was Kobe Johnson, who flashed a visible sigh when a 3-pointer dropped early in the second half after starting 0 for 4 from the field in the first half. His 3-point percentage had dipped to 25% after a weeks-long slump, but he found a long-awaited groove after the halftime buzzer, draining four 3-pointers on a variety of looks.
“Once I saw the first one go through … I did feel the weight come off my shoulders,” Johnson said, “and I just had the confidence from there on out.”
USC’s perimeter defense slumped in the second half, a variety of Golden Bears shooters draining confoundingly wide-open spot-ups. And the goodwill built through 35 minutes evaporated late, as Cal (4-10, 0-3) broke into an aggressive trap defense that completely slowed USC’s attack, generating a sloppy turnover by Rodman and a finish on the other end to cut USC’s lead to five points with two minutes left. But it was that same improved flow that all but clinched the win, Ellis weaving through traffic with the shot clock winding and finding a rolling Joshua Morgan on the bounce for a dunk to extend a lead Cal would never touch.
Johnson finished with 14 points, seven rebounds and five assists for the Trojans, who beat the Bears for the 11th straight time and avoided losing their first three conference games since the 2014 season. Collier had 13 points, and James added 10.
Cal’s Jaylon Tyson led all scorers with 23.
