It became clear early Saturday night that this was going to be one of those Boogie Ellis games.

The senior guard, who has played at a heightened confidence level this season, has delivered enough such performances already that they've become easy to spot in the making.

Ellis poured in one big 3-pointer after another on the way to setting career-highs with 33 points and 7 assists, but it wasn't the flurry of long-range daggers that he and USC coach Andy Enfield wanted to emphasize after the Trojans' 85-75 win over Stanford inside Galen Center.

"It felt good, but I'm more proud of myself with the 7 assists. I've been working on that a lot, watching a lot of film, just trying to become better with my passing," Ellis said. "I know I can score -- I'm more happy with the 7 assists."

Enfield concurred, noting that he actually subbed Ellis out of the game twice in the first half because he saw him settling for the outside jumpers (even if most were going in).

"It's pretty impressive, 33 points and 7 assists in the same game, so he made the right decisions," Enfield said. "He didn't have any assists until about 3 minutes left in the first half and he ended up with 3 at halftime because he finally started getting in gaps and passing at the right time, so it was very, very impressive."

It wasn't all Ellis on Saturday -- Drew Peterson had 21 points and 7 rebounds and Reese Dixon-Waters chipped in 12 points in his return from a four-game absence -- as the Trojans improved to 19-8 overall and 11-5 in the Pac-12 with another must-needed win for their NCAA tournament hopes.

But there was no mistaking who the catalyst was in this one.

USC was trailing 15-9 early when it reeled off a 16-2 run on a Peterson 3-pointer, a long Ellis 3 from several feet behind the line, a nice Peterson drive to the rim, another Ellis 3, a Kobe Johnson 3 and a Dixon-Waters dunk for a 25-17 lead.

And later when Stanford (11-16, 5-11) had climbed back to within 2 entering the final few minutes of the half, Ellis delivered again with 3s on back-to-back possessions to spark an 11-1 run for an eventual 41-30 halftime lead. The game was never closer than 7 points the rest of the way.

It was the fifth time this season Ellis has scored at least 27 points as he improved his team-leading scoring average to 17.1 per game.

"I was just out there playing, having fun," he said.

He finished 6 of 10 from 3-point range while the Trojans were 13 of 25 on 3s as a team.

"Stanford really sags in the lane, they switch ball screens and just pack the paint, so we knew we'd have opportunities to shoot them, but we had to make the right pass at the right time and we also had to make some," Enfield said. "Last week we made one the entire game at Oregon State -- it was nice to see some of those go in."

Said Ellis: "Definitely finding our stride, everybody's shooting the ball well. ... We have a lot of great shooters on our team. I feel like we struggled early, but coach knew we were a great shooting team. ... They want us to take them. We've just got to shoot them with confidence and knock them down and we did that tonight."

That makes 14 straight wins at Galen Center for the Trojans, who needed to take care of business this week against Cal and Stanford after dropping games at Oregon and Oregon State last week to plant themselves firmly on the NCAA tournament bubble.

With four games to go in the regular season, USC still has work to do in that regard.

But there was more good news Saturday night as Dixon-Waters played 28 minutes in his return to action, hitting 4 of 8 shots and adding 2 steals and a block in an all-around performance, and center Josh Morgan played 22 minutes in his return from a four-game absence due to a sprained ankle.

Now at full strength again, the Trojans will continue trying to play their way into the tournament for the third straight season, as Enfield noted how important Dixon-Waters and Morgan are to the overall operation.

"I thought for not playing for over two weeks he was incredible," Enfield said of Dixon-Waters. "... Josh is such a good defender. He's such a good defender. He knows all the coverages, he talks early, eh can block shots, he stays in front of people, he can switch, he's just a really good basketball player. It's nice to have him there."