Injuries have taken toll on Trojans

LOS ANGELES >> Andy Enfield wants you to know: he’s not making excuses. They don’t do that over there, he says, at Galen. He pursed his lips and furrowed his brow after Tuesday’s practice, staring out at an empty practice court, reiterating his point yet again.

“I don’t want you to mistake — I’m not using injury as an excuse,” USC’S coach said, sitting on the scorer’s table. “You have to go play.” But.

Oh, how one can count the ways. Senior leading scorer Boogie Ellis has been hobbled for much of a turbulent Useason for USC (8-9), most recently out with a hamstring injury for USC’S loss against Colorado. Freshman point guard Isaiah Collier is out for at least a month with a hand contusion. Center and paint presence Joshua Morgan has been out for two straight with a serious respiratory infection.

Ah, yes — there’s plenty more. Perimeter defensive ace and captain Kobe Johnson sprained his MCL early in the year. Washington State transfer DJ Rodman missed a game; backup big Vincent Iwuchukwu missed the start of the season; freshman Brandon Gardner has been out for months; the promising Bronny James was out with, well, you already know that one.

“This has been brutal,” Enfield said Tuesday.

There is a thread, here, that connects deeper than simple injury, that explains in Enfield’s mind why USC has looked so inconsistent and puzzlingly far from the vision of a group that began preseason as a national threat. A handful of close games — UC Irvine, Oklahoma, Long Beach State, Washington State — have slipped away from USC in the final minutes.

When asked if this has been among the most challenging years of his USC career, Enfield pointed back to such close losses: his program, he said, is used to winning those games.

“But at the same time, we understand that if you can’t get defensive stops in the last 2-3 minutes of a game,” Enfield said, “you put yourself in position to be at the mercy of a shot going around and rolling in.”

And therein lies the issue. USC has had little chance at developing defensive technique, teamwide defensive discipline, across week-long stretches where they’ve been thin at practices. Earlier in the season, when Ellis, Johnson, Iwuchukwu and James were all out, USC would resort to running 3-on-3 and 4-on-4 situations in practice, Enfield said. It’s showed, in a group that’s carried the second-highest defensive rating (and highest is a bad thing, with defensive ratings) for weeks in the Pac-12.

But, again, no excuses. Bad injury luck has exposed a program-wide issue with depth, caught somewhere between competing with veteran leaders and developing youth; these Trojans are perhaps irrevocably flawed with a lack of quality big-man minutes behind Morgan and lack of perimeter creation behind Ellis and Collier.

And a bad dream of a season could quickly turn into a nightmare. Ellis and Morgan, Enfield said Tuesday, are both day-to-day for a road trip to Arizona and ASU this weekend; against two of the better teams in the Pac-12, the Trojans’ record could quickly slip to 8-11 and 2-6 in conference play. If Ellis is out, USC will need another strong showing from sophomore guard Oziyah Sellers, who showed rapid growth with an 18-point game against Colorado — and some semblance of offense from James, who’s gone 0-forhis-last-14 from the floor.

“I know he’s ... going through a little streak of some missed shots,” Enfield said of James on Tuesday, “but we want him to take every open shot he can, and put pressure on the defense by driving it.”