USC opens fast, beats Montana

Trojans get hot early and run away amid much uncertainty with college athletics.

The Trojans basketball team begins game with a 32-8 run and improves to 2-0 after an easy victory.

Andy Enfield had enough to worry about.

The USC men’s basketball coach was already navigating a season of spectatorless stands and a strippeddown schedule. His team is in transition, trying to replace eight of last season’s 11 leading scorers.

The Trojans cleared their latest obstacle comfortably on Saturday, cruising past the Montana Grizzlies 76-62 at Galen Center. But a day earlier, another hurdle might have been thrown in their path in the form of a new stay-at-home order in Los Angeles County that offered few specifics regarding college sports.

“We just follow the lead of our athletic department and USC as a whole,” Enfield said. “They communicate with the county. I don’t get involved with that. We just run our basketball program as best we can given the circumstances.”

The order, which will take effect on Monday and last for three weeks, prohibits all public and private gatherings with individuals not from the same household. Exceptions were made for religious services and protests. The fate of local college athletics, however, was left shrouded in uncertainty.

“We know there’s a lot of people around the country, around the world suffering,” Enfield said. “We have some advantages to allow us to be able to participate in college athletics right now. We’re just trying to do our best and understand it’s an opportunity and a privilege to be out there on the court. Let’s try to take advantage of it.”

USC did that Saturday, bouncing back from Wednesday’s narrow season-opening overtime win against Cal Baptist by jumping out to an early lead against a Montana team making its season debut.

The Trojans scored 32 of the game’s first 40 points, including three separate 7-0 scoring runs and a 9-0 spurt in the first 13 minutes.

They made 10 of their first 13 shots, seven of which were assisted.

And they had nine players score before halftime, needing only two first-half points from five-star star freshman forward Evan Mobley to build a 44-25 lead at the intermission.

“We have a really unselfish team and it’s showing so far,” said junior guard Drew Peterson, who scored a team-high 13 points. “I think we’re on the right track.”

Mobley finished as the Trojans’ second-leading scorer, tallying nine of his 11 points in the second half while also collecting seven rebounds.

Yet, he didn’t have a bucket until finishing a twohanded dunk through traffic almost nine minutes into the game. By then, USC was already ahead by 15.

“They did a great job of sharing the basketball,” Enfield said. “Evan made some very nice passes, but he draws so much attention. The rest of our players did a great job offensively.”

The Trojans cooled off

down the stretch (USC shot 32% from the field in the second half to finish 50% for the game), yet never let Montana get within less than 12 points over the final 32 minutes.

“When we’re playing as a unit, our talent can take us to levels that can win us a Pac-12 championship,” Peterson said. “We know that.”

What the Trojans don’t yet know is how restrictive the county’s new orders will be for their team.

USC’s immediate plans shouldn’t be impacted. The team is scheduled to travel to Uncasville, Conn., on Sunday for the Legends Classic, where they will face Brigham Young on Tuesday and then either Connecticut or Vanderbilt on Thursday.

After that, however, the Trojans have three home games scheduled between Dec. 8-16, including their Pac-12 opener against Stanford on Dec. 13. That stretch was also supposed to provide important practice time for a team still integrating four new starters into its lineup.

“We’re trying to understand our team because we have so many new players,” Enfield said. “We didn’t have a [normal] preseason. We didn’t have a summer to evaluate them, to work on their skills, to put them in our system, to really get a good feel.”

But now, Enfield is facing one more potential restriction in a season already causing unprecedented headaches.

Saturday’s first half was an exhibition of the Trojans’ potential. Everything else that’s unfolded the last several days is a reminder of how much remains outside of their control.