Recap: Shorthanded USC lacks firepower in loss to UC Irvine

Until USC is at full strength it will be difficult to judge what type of team Andy Enfield has on his hands. Tuesday night, it wasn't a good one. The Trojans had their worst week of practice in years according to the their head coach, and it looked like it often throughout the matchup against UC Irvine at Galen Center.

Ultimately, the absences of starting guards Boogie Ellie and Kobe Johnson proved to be too much for USC (2-1) to overcome in what ended as a 70-60 upset loss for the 16th-ranked Trojans.

Ellis, USC's second leading scorer (17.5 points), missed the game with an ankle injury while Johnson missed his second consecutive matchup. Freshman Bronny James remains out eliminating three of the Trojans' top perimeter players.

Enfield and his team felt the impact of those losses and struggled to generate much offense outside of freshman star Isaiah Collier and junior forward Harrison Hornery, who had to slide over and play the guard position for the Trojans for most of the night.

Both Collier, who missed two practices this week himself after banging knees in last week's game against Cal State Bakersfield, and Hornery finished the game with career highs in scoring with 23 and 17 points, respectively. However, they weren't able to make up enough for what the team lacked in Tuesday's game.

"Isaiah Collier practiced basically half a practice yesterday and was out three days with his injury," Enfield said. "He was able to play tonight but without Kobe and Boogie. This week of practice leading up to the game was not good, and we didn't play any better today. We deserved to lose this game by the way we played, offensively especially. You can't shoot 28 percent, have 7 assists and 16 turnovers.

"It's frustrating. I know the players are very upset, and that's on me. I gotta figure out, even though we're shorthanded, figure out how to have better practices and obviously have to execute better offensively during the game."

Even with all the missing players and poor offensive play Tuesday night, the Trojans found themselves within one possession in the final minutes. USC pulled to within 1 point at the 2:49 mark before a turnover by Collier and a couple missed shots eventually led to the Anteaters growing that lead to 6 points thanks to a 3-pointer from Devin Tillis.

At that point the Trojans went into foul mode and could never climb back still having miscues into the final seconds of the game including a botched possession that ended with a leaning jump shot from Hornery as the shot clock expired.

It was the type of play that summarized the night for USC as it simply could not find the right play at the right time to flip the game in its favor.

"I'll definitely say the team, we just weren't locked in," said Collier, who had a game-high 7 turnovers in the loss. "I think that was the players' fault, on our end. We didn't start off the game with energy, so we'll take the blame."

It was evident early that it was going to be a long night for USC as the first half played out. Neither team led by more than 4 points in the opening half, and the Trojans shot just 25% from the floor during the first 20 minutes including missing nine 3-pointers in that span.

That lackluster shooting performance carried into the second half, and the remaining perimeter players simply could never find any kind of spark to make an impact.

Outside of the Collier, USC's other starting perimeter players, DJ Rodman and Oziyah Sellers, combined for just 6 points in the game on 1-of-19 shooting.

Big man Joshua Morgan was the only player other than Collier and Hornery to make any kind of impact offensively in the game for the Trojans. He finished with 8 points and 10 rebounds in the loss.

If not for Hornery, USC would have been in a difficult spot and he had several highlight moments including a 4-point play that pulled the Trojans within 4 points with under 6 minutes to play.

Despite his career night on the offensive end of the floor, the 6-foot-10 forward was focused more on the end result by the end of the game.

"That 4-point play obviously hyped everyone up and hyped us up a lot," he said. "He huddled and said to ourselves, 'We have to get this win, we have to get this win. Buckle down on defense.' But, we couldn't get stops on the other end. Scoring like we did really doesn't matter if we can't get stops on the other end."

At this stage, Enfield says the hope is both Ellis and Johnson can return to the floor "soon" but he did not provide any update other than that in his postgame press conference.

"We don't like to play guys unless they feel great, it's not worth it," the USC head coach said. "But, we've had some unfortunate injuries. Even Isaiah Collier was hurt, and we weren't sure he was gonna play until late yesterday (Monday). We thought we'd be without all three of them. So, it's been frustrating."

The Trojans are back in action Sunday at Galen Center where they will host Brown at 5 p.m.