{"id":463359,"date":"2025-12-22T01:38:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T01:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/463359\/"},"modified":"2025-12-22T01:38:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T01:38:13","slug":"after-scrambling-to-find-an-opponent-usc-dominates-uc-santa-cruz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/463359\/","title":{"rendered":"After scrambling to find an opponent, USC dominates UC Santa Cruz"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The call came Monday morning, just six days before USC<\/a> was slated to play its final nonconference contest. In light of the deadly shooting on Brown\u2019s campus, its men\u2019s basketball team wouldn\u2019t make the trip west.<\/a> If coach Eric Musselman<\/a> hoped to test his Trojans again before the new year, he and his USC staff had less than 24 hours to find a replacement.<\/p>\n

Which is how USC found itself facing UC Santa Cruz, a 6-6 Division III team with losses to Chapman, Redlands and Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, on Sunday. USC had no trouble overwhelming the Banana Slugs in a 102-63<\/a> victory. But given the scrambling it took to schedule Santa Cruz, no one was complaining about the seamless victory heading into the Trojans\u2019 winter break.<\/p>\n

Musselman, who notched his 250th career win, initially hoped that USC could find a D-1 program to take Brown\u2019s place. But rules limiting the amount of regular-season games a D-1 program can play narrowed that list considerably. It left USC\u2019s coaches counting by hand to decide which teams would fit.<\/p>\n

They first considered all the local schools, only to find that none would work. They looked into the teams facing local schools \u2014 and couldn\u2019t find any there, either. They even looked at Hawaii\u2019s schedule, since schools that face Hawaii receive an exemption to allow for an extra game.<\/p>\n

Only \u201ca select few\u201d schools fit any of the criteria, one person inside the program told The Times. Those teams could make it work because they had faced a D-II or D-III team at some point during the season which didn\u2019t count against its games limit. That also meant, in some cases, buying out their game contract with that school.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are some Division I schools, we couldn\u2019t get them to say yes, I don\u2019t know why,\u201d Musselman said. \u201cBecause I thought it was a great opportunity for some Division I schools to, you know, get guaranteed money.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was hardly the only complicating factor. By playing a Division I team, Musselman said, USC also ran the risk of affecting his team\u2019s strength of schedule come tournament time. Even a smaller margin of victory could mean paying the price.<\/p>\n

So why not just cancel the game?<\/p>\n

Awaiting USC after a brief holiday break are road trips to No. 2 Michigan and No. 6 Michigan State. Musselman didn\u2019t want to start that gauntlet coming off an extra four days away.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom a basketball standpoint,\u201d Musselman explained, \u201cwe could ill afford tonight to start our break.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

The staff spoke with scheduling experts who agreed that there was one option that made sense for USC: Find a team from the lower ranks of college basketball who was willing to take a beating for the Trojans to fill out their nonconference schedule. That way, the game wouldn\u2019t even register on USC\u2019s tournament resume.<\/p>\n

It was with all that criteria in mind that Musselman and his staff settled on Santa Cruz. But the Banana Slugs, who voted as a team to play the Trojans, didn\u2019t just roll over. They came out firing from three-point range, hitting eight in the first half alone. They would hit just eight shots inside the arc the entire game.<\/p>\n

With seven minutes remaining in the first half, Santa Cruz was down just three points.<\/p>\n

But eventually, USC\u2019s advantage in every other category except outside shooting would catch up to Santa Cruz. The Trojans slammed home one alley-oop, then another, then another in the second half. They hit 18 of 19 to open the second half and dominated the glass, finishing with a 36-rebound advantage.<\/p>\n

Musselman made a point to give more minutes to 7-foot-5 center Gabe Dynes, with a three-big lineup coming up against Michigan. Dynes responded with a team-leading 16 points, along with five rebounds and four blocks, which Musselman said was \u201ca huge step in the right direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

The game also gave new point guard Kam Woods a chance to get comfortable in the Trojans\u2019 rotation. Woods missed all five of his shots in 21 minutes but was grateful for his first hoops action since March, when he played with Robert Morris.<\/p>\n

\u201cI definitely needed this game,\u201d Woods said.<\/p>\n

For the Trojans, it was a necessary tuneup heading into the break. Considering what it took to get it on the schedule, their coach was especially thankful.<\/p>\n

\u201cSanta Cruz stepped up,\u201d Musselman said, \u201cand I give them a lot of credit. I really do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The call came Monday morning, just six days before USC was slated to play its final nonconference contest.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":463360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[75664,2625,1582,276,211170,211168,136730,1910,2961,135091,224,5337,471,6566,16495,36418,93642,11016,211169,3355],"class_list":{"0":"post-463359","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-basketball-team","9":"tag-brown","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-california","12":"tag-criterion","13":"tag-d-1-program","14":"tag-eric-musselman","15":"tag-game","16":"tag-la","17":"tag-local-school","18":"tag-los-angeles","19":"tag-losangeles","20":"tag-no","21":"tag-place","22":"tag-schedule","23":"tag-trojans","24":"tag-uc-santa-cruz","25":"tag-usc","26":"tag-usc-staff","27":"tag-victory"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115760668087185450","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}