Basketball: USC gets back to form, dominates Stanford in 37-point win

No longer nationally ranked, no longer in control of its path to a Pac-12 championship, and with the narrative around the squad and the season shifting suddenly to one of questions and concern, the USC basketball team had everything to prove Wednesday night.

Just as it was foolish for some to draw such dramatic takeaways and conclusions from the Trojans' first two-game losing streak (and three losses in four games overall), it would be errant to read too much into this one game either -- but what a resurgent response.

USC dominated Stanford from start to finish for a 79-42 win at Galen Center to remain alive in the Pac-12 championship hunt heading into its regular-season finale later this week.

The 37-point margin of victory marks the Trojans' largest win period since a 42-point victory over Southern Utah in December of 2018 and the largest Pac-12 victory for the program since 1967. Overall, the team improves to 20-6 and 14-5 in the Pac-12, trailing Oregon (13-4 in the league) by percentage points for first place.

"March is here, so it's good to come in with some positive energy," forward Chevez Goodwin said. "... This is the time of year where make or break, if you lose you go home, so we have to get back on track and go into March and go into tournament play with a lot of energy -- positive energy."

They found plenty of that Wednesday night.

Stanford (14-12, 10-10) was without leading scorer Oscar da Silva due to injury, but the Cardinal certainly didn't play like it was one player away from being competitive.

The visitors started 1 for 16 and then 2 for 22 from field, while USC used an early 15-0 run to jump ahead 17-2 and later led 25-6 before Stanford finally made its third field goal of the game with 4:24 left in the first half.

As for that early run, it started with a Drew Peterson drive and dunk, Ethan Anderson dropped in a short jumper, Max Agbonkpolo knocked in an open 3-pointer, Goodwin scored on a layup, Anderson scored from the paint again, Evan Mobley made a slick cut to free himself for an open dunk and Agbonkpolo connected on a floater.

Later, it was an Isaiah Mobley alley-oop dunk and a long jumper from Evan Mobley to get it to that early 19-point lead.

The game was never remotely close again. In fact, the second half started just as badly for Stanford. After the Cardinal scored first, USC reeled off the next 14 points on 3s from Peterson, Tahj Eaddy, Peterson again, Eaddy again and then another jumper inside the arc from Peterson to make it a 31-point game.

"I think our players were very focused the last two days, and tonight when they showed up they knew that they had to play well and they wanted to play well," Enfield said. "So collectively and as individuals, you saw a lot of just focus on what they needed to do as a team to try to win this game."

Eaddy finished with a team-high 16 points, Peterson had 15 points, 9 rebounds and 6 assists, and Evan Mobley had 10 points and 8 boards.

Again, the Trojans needed this -- badly.

They had capped a stretch of four games in eight days with lopsided road losses at Colorado (80-62) and at Utah (71-61). Once ranked as high as No. 17, USC dropped out of the AP poll and fell behind UCLA and Oregon in the Pac-12 standings ... which is a complicated matter.

Oregon beat UCLA on Wednesday night and now controls its own destiny in the conference with one game remaining, Sunday at Oregon State. But the Ducks are going to finish with only 18 conference games to USC's 20, so winning percentage will decide the conference championship -- meaning the Trojans need to beat UCLA on Saturday and have the Ducks then lose their finale.

"I think we're right there. We have a game on Saturday. We have to worry about the UCLA game -- that's it. We can't control anything else," Enfield said. "It is disappointing that Oregon doesn't have to play UCLA in Pauley [Pavilion] like they were supposed to, but that's all I really can say. Tomorrow we'll start looking at UCLA. They're an exceptional team, they're very good defensively and we understand how hard it is to win at UCLA. So we're just going to focus on what we can control and that's to prepare as best as we can and play as hard as we can."

The Pac-12 championship isn't the end goal, of course. However the standings shake out, the Trojans are hoping to make a run in the postseason, and first they had to rediscover the form they'd played with most of the season -- starting on the defensive end.

"I never make excuses when we lose games, but when I went back and watched the second half of the Utah game we looked like we were moving at 50 percent speed, and it wasn't just one person. We were very, very slow on defense just getting up the court, our offense was stagnant, and we were just exhausted. Sometimes people forget these are college students and to play four games like that on the road, they're not used to that. They're not used to playing in altitude, so it was nice to see that we had so much more energy tonight," Enfield said. "... I was really, really happy tonight to see us get back to the energy and the spirit that we've had this entire season. We're 20-6. For this group to win 20 games, we're so impressed with our young men here and our players. To come together with a brand new team and to have 20 wins right now, it's just a credit to how our players have come together and played together and had that energy for most of the season.

"So we're really thankful for what they've done for our team, for our program, and they also understand that we have a huge game on Saturday, and then we have a big week the following week and an even bigger week the week after that. So our season is not done, but we're very, very appreciative of what they've done for our program to be 20-6 right now."

Enfield gave the team off Sunday to not only rest but to just get away from everything for a day before returning to practice. He noted that the Trojans really weren't able to have any intense practices during that stretch of four games in eight days, and he felt that also contributed to the dip defensively.

"We were very tired. We were mentally tired and physically tired. I think the altitude really affected us, just the fact that we had four games in a week. So I think the first thing we tried to do is just give our guys a day off, get them away from the staff and away from each other," he said. "We came in Monday, we watched video of our previous game and then we watched video of our Stanford opponent. We were very focused in practice and I thought our players responded."

USC held Stanford to 25.4-percent shooting and owned a 45-27 rebounding advantage.

For whatever the outside chatter was about this team, this season and where it was all heading, Goodwin says the players kept the rough roadtrip in perspective.

"No one panicked. It's college basketball -- everyone loses. You'd rather not lose, but coming out of that mountain week and us losing two in a row, it's kind of rough. First time all year we've lost back to back games. But we bounced back really quickly," he said. "We went back to the fundamentals and got back to ourselves, and I feel like tonight kind of proved that we got back to who we are and what we're capable of being. I feel we're back on the right track now."