Their first games as members of the Big Ten Conference didn’t go as planned for USC or Washington.
The Trojans (5-4, 0-1) lost at home to No. 12 Oregon 68-60 on Wednesday, a night after the Huskies (6-2, 0-1) fell 69-58 across town at UCLA.
The former Pac-12 rivals are scheduled to meet Saturday afternoon in Seattle.
“In order to win a Big Ten game, we are going to have to play hard like (Wednesday) and we are going to have to make some shots,” first-year Trojans coach Eric Musselman said. “We led for 30-plus minutes against a team that’s ranked 12th in the country and against an undefeated team. I thought we gave ourselves a chance to win the game.”
USC led 53-46 with 6:40 remaining before the Ducks closed with a 22-7 run.
Desmond Claude led the Trojans with 22 points and Chibuzo Agbo added 18, making all 10 of his free-throw attempts.
“I think this team is for sure going to win some Big Ten games,” Agbo said. “We may have dropped this one, but we have Washington on the road. We’re going to dial it back in and get back to work. That’s all it is.”
The Huskies’ loss ended a five-game winning streak, which included a 79-69 victory against Santa Clara in the championship of the Acrisure Invitational in Palm Desert, Calif.
Great Osobor led Washigton with 14 points, nine rebounds and four assists against UCLA, but also committed eight turnovers. Teammate Tyler Harris had 12 points and 11 boards.
“We did enough defensively and rebounding,” first-year Huskies coach Danny Sprinkle said in a postgame radio interview. “We got enough stops to be able to win the game. We got to be better offensively.”
The Huskies shot 38.8 percent from the field (19 of 49), including just 3 of 16 on 3-pointers, against the nation’s No. 1 scoring defense (53.1 ppg).
“You can only get stops for so long,” Sprinkle said. “At some point, you got to make shots.”
–Field Level Media
