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Basketball: Breaking down the Pac-12 tournament bracket and USC's path

It sounded as if USC basketball coach Andy Enfield had made peace with whatever was going to happen Sunday.

After watching his Trojans pull off a dramatic win at UCLA on Saturday, Enfield said whether they ended up first or second in the standings "doesn't diminish what our players have accomplished."

"They've had such a terrific season so far. We have a lot to play for next week in the Pac-12 tournament and the NCAA tournament," he said, knowing that Oregon needed to be upset by Oregon State on Sunday for USC to win the Pac-12 regular-season championship.

That didn't happen, as the Ducks closed out an 80-67 win to finish atop the standings based on winning percentage, despite playing two less games than USC.

But Enfield was right -- his Trojans have plenty left ahead of them.

At 21-6 (15-5 Pac-12), this has been Enfield's most successful team in eight seasons at USC, and it will assuredly be his third Trojans team to reach the NCAA tournament (though the 2019-20 team was on track to make it as well before the season was shut down).

The Trojans' best conference record in those previous seven seasons was 12-6 (2017-18) while this is the best winning percentage of any USC team under Enfield.

Which is impressive given the circumstances -- the Trojans returned really only two rotation players with any notable experience, added in four transfers from varying levels of college basketball around the country who would help form the core of this team, and rebuilt everything around a 5-star freshman phenom in Evan Mobley ... on the fly after not having summer workouts due to the pandemic.

They were picked to finish sixth in the league and ended up second, but the question is what can the Trojans do the rest of the way?

"It comes down to how you execute and how you defend, and I think we've proven we're a top [defensive team]," Enfield said Saturday. "We were sixth in the nation coming into tonight in field goal defense ... but this team could win some games in the NCAA tournament. But at the same time we also had a few games this year where we didn't make shots and we struggled, so nothing is taken for granted. This is a team that defends at a very high level, plays very, very hard, and if we can make shots we're usually very good."

USC finished the regular-season 12th nationally in field goal percentage defense, holding opponents to 39.13 percent. Led by Mobley's presence -- he ranks 8th nationally with 2.85 blocks per game -- and a collective buy-in, defense has indeed been the hallmark for a team that doesn't seem to know night to night where the offense is going to come from.

Mobley leads the team in scoring at 16.1 points per game, but he's averaged just 11.6 points over the last five games. Tahj Eaddy, a grad transfer who arrived from Santa Clara, has been an invaluable offensive spark while averaging 13.8 points per game, but he can be a streaky shooter. Drew Peterson (9.8 PPG) suffered a prolonged slump late in the season before regaining his confidence, Isaiah Mobley (9.0 PPG, 7.5 RBG) has been a steady rebounder but an erratic offensive contributor and so on.

The Trojans ranked 131st in 3-point shooting at 34.35 percent and 319th in free throw shooting at 64.37 percent. They had to overcome both of those weaknesses Saturday to pull out that stunning win at UCLA in which they shot just 4 of 16 from 3-point range and 10 of 20 at the line.

"We're concerned every game we play about those two things," Enfield said rather candidly Saturday. "We're concerned every game we play about those two things. We were 3 for 15 before Tahj hit that [game-winning 3]. He was 1 for 6 from the 3-point line -- he missed about 4 or 5 clean, open looks. So yeah, our perimeter shooting, we have to be able to make 3s. ... We can't win a lot of big basketball games going 2 for 20 or 3 for 18 or 2 for 21 like we've been a few times this year from the 3-point line. And the foul line, Chevez [Goodwin] and Isaiah are our main guys who are shooting a low percentage and they were 50 percent, they were 6 for 12. If they get to the foul line that much, it is a concern. ...

"We need our big guys to shoot free throws, especially coming up next week and in the NCAA tournament, because we're expecting a lot of close games coming up."

Speaking of what's ahead, let's take a closer look ...

Breaking down the Pac-12 tournament bracket

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As the No. 2 seed in the tournament, USC will play Thursday at 5:30 p.m. PT against the winner of the 7-10 game from Wednesday night between Utah (11-12) and Washington (5-20).

The Trojans lost to the Utes in Salt Lake City, Utah, 71-61, just a couple weeks ago, but USC won the earlier meeting in Los Angeles, 64-46, back on Jan. 2. The Trojans swept the season series with Washington convincingly.

If they prevail in that, they would play either No. 3 Colorado (20-7), No. 6 Stanford (14-12) or No. 11 Cal (8-19) in the semifinals. Two of USC's five conference losses came against the Buffaloes -- 72-62 at home on Dec. 31 and 80-62 on the road late last month.

So essentially, it seems likely USC will get a chance to rematch against the last two teams it lost to, this time at a neutral location in Las Vegas, Nev.

NCAA tournament projections

In his latest bracket projection, ESPN's Joe Lunardi has the Trojans slotted as a No. 6 seed (matched up against No. 11 seed Michigan State).

See his full projections here.

Back in the AP top-25 poll

After falling out of the AP top-25 poll for a week, the Trojans are back in at No. 24. They've been as high as No. 17 this season.

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