USC would like to get on road to success
Enfield has rebuilt team into top 25, but Trojans still struggle away from L.A.
A charter bus idled outside Galen Center on Wednesday afternoon with its underbelly open waiting to ferry USC to Los Angeles International Airport. It was an ominous portent.
As the Trojans (15-2, 2-2 Pac-12 Conference) prepare for an important series against Utah (11-4, 2-1) and Colorado, they stand on the cusp of contending in the Pac-12. The rebuild of their program under Coach Andy Enfield is almost complete. One benchmark, however, remains untouched: consistently winning Pac-12 games on the road. In Enfield’s threeplus seasons, USC has won a total of four such games.
Stealing a win or two this week would be useful. No. 25 USC has embarked on the toughest five-game stretch of its season. It will return from the trip to play Arizona, Arizona State and UCLA.
But the mountain trip, which for USC often means swings of about 4,000 feet in altitude and 40 degrees in temperature, can be especially bedeviling.
“These two road trips, whoever made these two teams together, it’s kind of messed up,” shooting guard Elijah Stewart said. “You might even get sick.”
Winning on the road in college basketball is difficult under any circumstances. According to Collegiate Basketball News, which examined teams’ records in their current arena, home teams win about twice as often, 68% of the time, than road teams. Only a fraction of Division I teams, 5%, had losing records at home.
The Trojans’ struggles have been more acute. Last season, USC won only two conference road games — and one of those was across town at UCLA. (The Trojans did win their first conference road game this season over a hobbling Oregon State team.)
Enfield said he had yet to find a satisfactory answer to why road games have been so difficult. “I certainly don’t have an explanation,” he said.
Stewart had more hypotheses. For one, he said, college trips can be disorienting. Much of USC’s roster probably hasn’t left Southern California very often.
“You’ve got to go to all these foreign places,” he said. “We’re about to go to Utah. I know all our 50 states. And I know all seven continents. But I really don’t know where that’s located. Whenever you think about going to Utah, you really don’t know where that’s at. All you know is it’s cold.”
On top of that, he said, “you get out of your routine.” The players sleep in unfamiliar beds. Stewart said he always ends up with a sore throat after traveling to Utah, Colorado or the Washington schools.
The crowd doesn’t help either.
“You know, we’re people’s children,” he said. “We like being treated and talked to nice. But we go to road games, you hear the foulest stuff.”
Enfield noted that experience can help in road games, and “unfortunately for us, we’ve always been one of the younger teams in the country, including this year,” he said.
He said the best way he knows to improve a team’s road chances is simple: Be better at basketball.
USC has not been playing its best basketball since the Pac-12 season started. Part of that can be attributed to Stewart and guard Shaqquan Aaron, who have both fallen into shooting slumps at the same time. They have combined to make just 34% of their field goals in conference play.
The shooting woes, like most of USC’s offensive ailments, can be connected to the loss of forward Bennie Boatwright to a knee injury. Stewart said without Boatwright the f loor hasn’t been as spaced.
Boatwright is still “a couple weeks” away from a return, Enfield said.
Aaron suggested the slump may just be a slump.
“It happens,” Aaron said. “It happens to the Kobes and Jordans of the world.”
USC TONIGHT
VS. UTAH When: 6 PST. Where: Jon M. Huntsman Center, Salt Lake City On the air: TV: Pac-12 Networks. Radio: 690. Update: USC hasn’t defeated Utah in seven tries. Utah has lost three times to ranked teams: No. 12 Butler, No. 15 Xavier and No. 16 Arizona. The Utes have six players averaging double figures. Forward David Collette leads the team with 15.4 points per game.