Even the most optimistic USC basketball fan, the wildest dreamer of the potential of this Trojans team, couldn't have envisioned this. Not even close.
No. 6-seeded USC shot the ball better than it has all season from the perimeter, got scoring from up and down its rotation like it rarely has, jumped out to a 19-point halftime lead on No. 3 Kansas and only made it even more of a blowout in the second half while closing out an 85-51 win Monday night in the second round of the NCAA tournament in Indianapolis, Ind.
For the first time since 2007, the Trojans are headed to the Sweet 16.
More to the point, it's only the third time this program has advanced past the second round of the NCAA tournament since the field expanded to 64 teams in 1985 (and now 68 teams), including an Elite Eight appearance in 2001 that is now also within reach of matching.
Simply put, this USC basketball season has officially vaulted into historical territory.
"This game meant a lot to our program and to our fans. USC basketball is on the rise," coach Andy Enfield said afterward. "Over the last 80 years it's been like a rollercoaster, a lot of great players, great coaches, great teams, but we're trying to sustain the success -- build the program and sustain the success -- and I think beating a team like Kansas to go to the Sweet 16 is a step in the right direction."
RELATED: WATCH: Postgame reaction from Andy Enfield, Isaiah Mobley
Doing that earns these Trojans a place as a distinguished team in program lore. Doing it in the manner they did should furthermore earn USC substantial national attention -- and new believers -- heading into its Sweet 16 showdown with Pac-12 rival Oregon on Sunday.
USC didn't just topple one of college basketball's blue-blood programs -- it dealt Kansas the third-largest defeat in its storied history.
Enfield has always been quick to defend his program and its accomplishments to critics -- or more often even non-critics who simply ask the kind of fair questions that put him on the defensive. There was some of that earlier this last week whenever the point was raised that USC and its coach had a lot at stake and perhaps sometime to prove this postseason from a big-picture perspective. Enfield always has his stats ready to respond to any such prompt -- five 20-win seasons in the last six years, third-most wins by a power conference program over the last two years, NBA draft picks, etc.
The missing evidence was significant postseason success, and well, this now qualifies, given how rarely this has happened for this program -- before 2007 and 2001, the previous last time USC was one of the last 16 teams standing came in 1961.
So this time, Enfield went on the offensive in his postgame media session, having some fun with those who doubted or questioned his team's chances against the Jayhawks -- who as a program have all that postseason history that USC is lacking.
"I really want to thank CBS," Enfield said sarcastically. "[Assistant coach Eric] Mobley and coach [Jason] Hart, coach [Chris] Capko and coach Desmon [Farmer], we were at lunch today and we were checking the scores, and Coach Mobley pulled his phone out and on came a CBS studio [segment and] the two guys picked Kansas because they said USC basketball and Andy Enfield-coached teams and USC teams are so undisciplined. They said, very undisciplined so Kansas is going to win. Just imagine if we were disciplined."
Enfield and his team had earned the right to bask in this one a little.
Sophomore forward Isaiah Mobley set the tone early, knocking down all four of his 3-pointers in the first half, and USC shot 11 of 18 from long range in the game. The worst fear for Trojans fans this postseason was that the shooting would go ice cold (or missed free throws would doom the team) and it was the complete opposite vs. the Jayhawks, who ranked as one of the top defensive teams in the country by the advanced metrics. But not Monday night.
The Trojans jumped out to a 23-12 lead when Mobley's third 3-pointer swished through the net. They closed with 11 straight points to end the first half (including another Mobley 3) to go up 40-21. And they just never stopped piling on the stunned Jayhawks the rest of the way.
Isaiah Mobley has now strung together his best two-game stretch of the season in this NCAA tournament, finishing with 17 points, 8 rebounds and 4 assists in this one, while younger brother Evan Mobley added 10 points, 13 rebounds, 5 assists and 3 blocks, Isaiah White scored 13, Tahj Eaddy chipped in 12 points, Chevez Goodwin scored 10 off the bench and Ethan Anderson came to life with 9 points in a well-rounded and thorough team performance.
The Trojans shot 57.1 percent overall for the game while holding Kansas to 29.0-percent shooting.
In trying to put this moment in perspective afterward, Isaiah Mobley kept coming back to some version of the same sentiment over and over.
"Like I've been saying this whole time, this is the opportunity that everybody dreams for," he said.
The elder Mobley has incredibly now made 9 of 11 3-pointers over the last four games after making just 7 3s all season before that. His emergence this week -- out from the shadow of his star freshman brother and into a true Mobley Brothers tandem -- has been the story of the tournament so far for USC, and it was only fitting that this sublime Trojans performance started with him draining his first 3-point attempt in the opening minutes.
Evan Mobley followed with a dunk on an assist from his brother a few minutes later and the Trojans were off and running.
Isaiah Mobley scored 5 more points in that 11-0 run to close the half while going into the break with a game-high 14 points. Just for further perspective, before this NCAA tournament started he had scored 14 points in an entire game only once since mid-January.
After dropping in 15 points Saturday in the opening-round win over Drake, he carried that momentum right across town to Hinkle Fieldhouse on Monday.
"I'm extremely confident. I have been playing at a high level for a long time now, so moments like this, they don't necessarily scare me," said Isaiah Mobley, who like his brother was a 5-star recruit and national star on the AAU circuit in high school. "Like I said, you live for these opportunities. And here also, there's some fans, so that also boosted my confidence a whole lot. Just having faith in myself and God's blessed me with the talents that I have and I've got my mojo going, so I just hopefully [can] keep it going."
The closest the game ever got the rest of the way was 16 points early in the second half, but the Trojans unleashed another 3-point barrage to maintain total control.
Eaddy, Drew Peterson and White (three times) combined for five 3s in a 5-minute stretch to push the lead to 58-35. USC soon followed with a stretch of eight straight made shots, including six points from Goodwin (two dunks) and finally an Eaddy 3 to peak the lead at 79-44 with less than 5 minutes remaining.
"In the words of the late great Kobe Bryant, I told the team at halftime 'The job's not done,'" Isaiah Mobley said. "We just had to keep fighting because Kansas is an excellent team. I believe last game in the tournament they were down all game and came back and won, so we told them to step on the gas all the while through."
The Trojans' 61.1-percent 3-point shooting display was by far their best of the season and only the second time since early January they'd even hit half of their long-range shots.
On the other end, USC held Kansas forward David McCormack -- the star of the Jayhawks' first-round win -- to 5 points and 4 rebounds on 2-of-4 shooting. Marcus Garrett (15 points) was the only Jayhawk to score in double figures.
"I was more impressed with our defense because to hold Kansas to 29 percent from the field, we held Drake to 29 percent from the field the first game, to hold two teams in the NCAA tournament to under 30 percent is really impressive for our guys," Enfield said. "In our offense, I thought we really shared the ball and took good shots. We had a few silly turnovers at times, but Kansas is such a good defensive team -- to score over 80 points, I thought our players made the right play, they were patient and they were poised. It all starts with defense for us so I was really really proud of our defense tonight."
The matchup with Oregon now in the Sweet 16 is interesting, considering the teams finished 1-2 in the Pac-12 regular-season standings -- and not without some controversy. USC was 15-5 in the conference, winning the most games of any Pac-12 team, and won its only meeting with Oregon, 72-58 in late February, but the Ducks were crowned regular-season champs with a 14-4 league record based on win percentage while losing a couple games to COVID cancellations.
"Oregon is a really good team. They've been on a roll. I don't want to say necessarily they got luck, because they are a good team, but they stole the Pac-12 championship from us," Isaiah Mobley said. "I think we match up well, though. We have chips against our shoulder because we beat them and they got the championship from us, so I think it will be a great matchup."
Again, USC has only been to the Elite 8 once in the last 60-plus years -- in 2001 -- and now the Trojans are just one game away from making a special season even more historical.
"I feel like this team has made history all throughout the season so why not make a little more," Isaiah Mobley said.
