ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Morez Johnson Jr. scored a career-high 29 points, including 17 in the first half, and No. 2 Michigan beat No. 24 USC 96-66 on Friday night.
Roddy Gayle Jr. added 12 points for the Wolverines (13-0, 3-0 Big Ten), and Will Tschetter, Trey McKenney and L.J. Cason each scored 10.
Michigan is off to its best start since it won 17 straight games to start the 2018-19 season.
Jaden Brownell scored 16 points and Ezra Ausar added 15 for the Trojans (12-2, 1-2), whose only previous loss was by eight points against Washington on Dec. 6. Chad Baker-Mazara, who came into the game averaging 21 points, was hampered by early foul trouble and finished with 12 points on three-of-11 shooting.
Michigan starting guard Nimari Burnett was helped from the court with 16:25 left after falling during a battle under the basket. He went down to the floor and appeared to be bleeding above his eyebrow and holding his ankle. He sat on the bench the rest of the night.
The Wolverines bolted out to an 11-0 lead thanks to a defense that forced six early turnovers. USC got within five points twice in the first half and Michigan responded with a 32-19 run to build a 49-31 halftime advantage.
The Lakers are still searching for an identity after 31 games, a task complicated by injuries that have depleted their rotation for much of the season.
They’re lacking a defensive personality. They haven’t been a physical team, an overly athletic team or a fast team.
The Lakers got a close look at a team that embodies all of those characteristics in a 128-106 loss to the Detroit Pistons on Tuesday night at Crypto.com Arena.
Coach JJ Redick acknowledged the Lakers are still trying to figure out who they are and how they can fix their issues after losing for the fourth time in five games.
Lakers star LeBron James is fouled by Detroit Pistons guard Javonte Green (31) in the first half Tuesday.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
“The players, staff, everybody, we’ve really tried to play the right way every night and have the right intent,” Redick said. “The flow of lineups and rotations and all that has been challenging for everybody, not just the coaches. It’s a challenge for the players. And building an identity is difficult.”
“I think that’s hard to figure out with this team right now.”
It’s been hard because starters Austin Reaves (calf) and Rui Hachimura (calf) are out. Key rotation player Gabe Vincent (back) is also out. In addition, LeBron James missed the first 14 games with sciatica.
The Lakers’ roster has been completely healthy for just two games this season.
“We got some very important guys out right now,” said James, who scored 17 points on his 41st birthday. “So that’s very hard to get a rhythm of chemistry on the floor with guys that you know you’re gonna play with every night. Guys you know are going to come in with the subs and patterns and things like that.
“But still no excuse. We still got to go out and execute and I think we did that tonight. I thought, like I said, the turnovers were too many pick-sixes, but we came in, we played hard, we executed. The better team tonight won.”
What the Lakers (20-11) haven’t done much all season is play defense at a high level.
That was the case against the Pistons (25-8), who shot 63% from the field and 46% from three-point range. They had 74 points in the paint, getting inside with ease. They also had 31 fast-break points. The Lakers had 21 turnovers, eight coming from Luka Doncic, who finished with 30 points and 11 assists.
“We’ve got to definitely match their physicality,” Doncic said. “That’s the whole point. We got to match how they play.”
The Lakers’ 11 losses have been by an average of 20.3 points per game.
The Lakers got better on defense in the third quarter. After giving up 36 points in the first quarter and 34 in the second, the Lakers gave up 26 in the third and were down 96-88.
But they fell apart in the fourth, giving up an 18-6 run that put them in a 20-point hole midway through the quarter. The Lakers turned the ball over six times during that stretch, leading Redick to call a timeout with six minutes remaining.
That still didn’t stop the Pistons from building a 26-point lead and coasting to victory.
“Yeah, I think we just let off of the rope a little bit,” Doncic said. “Like I said, I think we played good basketball for three quarters, physical basketball. We just kind of let go of the rope.”
Lakers guard Luka Doncic, right, inadvertently hits Detroit Pistons forward Ronald Holland II (5) in the face after Holland steals the ball in the second half Tuesday night.
What began as a blowout, ended as a down-to-the-wire finish Saturday, as the Houston Texans held off the Chargers with a 20-16 victory at SoFi Stadium.
The outcome rippled through the AFC, with the Denver Broncos clinching the AFC West, and the Indianapolis Colts eliminated from playoff contention. The Broncos are the first team other than Kansas City to win the division in the past decade.
The Chargers (11-5), who had won four in a row, made some uncharacteristic mistakes to fritter away scoring chances.
Justin Herbert, who otherwise had a tremendous and gutty game, was intercepted a yard away from the end zone in the first half.
Cameron Dicker, the most accurate kicker in NFL history, missed for the first time in his career inside of 40 yards and in the fourth quarter hooked an extra-point try, only the fourth PAT miss of his career.
Herbert completed 21 of 32 passes for 236 yards with a touchdown and interception.
Houston’s C.J. Stroud completed 16 of 28 for 244 yards with two touchdowns and two interceptions.
The Texans (11-5), who got off to an 0-3 start this season, came into Saturday’s game riding a seven-game winning streak.
They played host to the Chargers in the first round of the playoffs last season and collected a 32-12 victory, intercepting Herbert four times.
On Saturday, Herbert kept the Chargers in the game, absorbing hits from every angle yet still throwing a one-yard touchdown pass to Oronde Gadsden II at the end of the third quarter and setting up another touchdown, a five-yard run by rookie Omarion Hampton, with 3:37 left in the fourth.
Dicker missed the extra point on the latter touchdown, meaning the Chargers couldn’t tie with a field goal and needed a touchdown.
At the end of the first half, Dicker missed a 32-yard field goal, and weird as that was, it encapsulated what kind of start it was for the Chargers.
They were flat and flat-footed from the beginning, surrendering a 75-yard touchdown pass on Houston’s first possession and a 43-yard touchdown pass on the second.
The Texans were up, 14-0, before the Chargers got their initial first down.
Herbert was sacked three times in the half, and on the first appeared to have hurt his surgically repaired left hand. At least he was wincing and favoring that hand as he walked off the field, but it didn’t sideline him.
Despite getting off to a two-touchdown lead, the Texans didn’t run away with the game.
Derwin James Jr. had an interception early in the second quarter to set up a field goal for the Chargers.
The Chargers got a field goal and moved into position for a touchdown in the second quarter when Herbert connected with Quentin Johnston for a 60-yard gain.
On the following play, however, Herbert attempted to hit Gadsden over the middle. The pass wasn’t perfectly timed, and glanced off the hands of the rookie tight end, who was near the goal line. Houston linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair made the interception at the one.
Minutes later, the Chargers would get another golden opportunity to score. Elijah Molden made an interception at the Houston 32, and his team made it into the red zone before Dicker’s failed attempt.
Through a near-perfect nonconference slate, no matter what was thrown USC’s way, whether injuries or other unforeseen circumstances, the Trojans had never lacked for life on the court. It was that endless energy that had helped power them to a 10-1 start.
But for a while Wednesday, that vigor was conspicuously absent against Texas San Antonio, a team that lost four of its last five. Maybe it was the setting, in a mostly empty and eerily quiet Galen Center. Maybe it was the “devastating” news from earlier in the day, as USC announced that point guard Rodney Rice would undergo shoulder surgery and miss the rest of the season.
Whatever it was, USC was eventually able to shake it off Wednesday night, turning a deficit late in the first half to a convincing, 97-70 victory over San Antonio in the second.
The blip, however brief, would beg questions of how a short-handed roster might handle the brutal Big Ten slate that awaits USC in two weeks’ time. The Trojans start that stretch with an especially savage span that includes three top-10 teams in No. 2 Michigan, No. 9 Michigan State and No. 6 Purdue. Whether they can weather that stretch without three players coaches expected to be top contributors should say a lot about where the Trojans are headed this season.
Chad Baker-Mazara reacts after scoring on an offensive rebound in the first half.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
“Without them, we’re going to have to grind and play so hard to win games,” coach Eric Musselman said. “We have a lot to clean up, and we have to exceed the opposition from a playing-hard standpoint. We’re undermanned. We don’t have Alijah Arenas. We don’t have Rodney Rice. And we don’t have Amarion Dickerson. That’s a lot.”
That grind was the focus of Musselman’s message to his team at halftime Wednesday, after USC had come out looking unusually lifeless. Through the game’s first 15 minutes, the Trojans were outhustled and outworked on the glass as the Roadrunners drew fouls, forced turnovers and racked up seven early offensive rebounds.
With 3:38 remaining in the first half, they were still trailing the 4-6 Roadrunners, who in their last two had lost to Alabama by 42 and Colorado by 24.
But when the Trojans finally turned it on, in the final minutes of the first half, there was no stopping the onslaught. Ryan Cornish hit a jumper. Ezra Ausar took a steal to the hoop. Chad Baker-Mazara dunked home a missed three. USC finished the first half on a 13-0 run and took control from there.
It did so in the same fashion it had in pretty much every game since Rice went down, by leaning on Baker-Mazara and Ausar, who are averaging a combined 38 points per game.
Both emerged like a shot of adrenaline after halftime. Mazara poured in 17 second-half points to give him 20 total for the game, while Ausar, the nation’s leader in free-throw attempts, continued bullying defenders in the paint.
Ausar finished with a game-high 22 points and added 10 rebounds, giving him his first double-double of the season.
“My energy is contagious, and humbly, once I’m going, everybody is going,” Ausar said. “If my energy ain’t right, my team’s energy ain’t right.”
He’ll be especially critical next month, with a series of bruising Big Ten frontcourts awaiting the Trojans.
“Ezra is going to keep getting better,” Musselman said. “His basketball future is so bright. He hasn’t even tipped what he’s going to be. … We’re gonna rely on Ezra to keep this group together and be a leader, and he’s done that.”
Arenas returns to practice in the coming days and will hopefully be ready to go by mid-January. Others will have to make the mark, until then, if USC hopes to survive that stretch short-handed.
Against San Antonio, it was Cornish who answered the call. The Dartmouth transfer had played more than 15 minutes in a game just once this season before Wednesday. But in his first start at point guard, Cornish came alive with 18 points, including four three-pointers.
“He was at the bottom of the roster almost, and he’s earned what he’s getting,” Musselman said. “We need people to step up, and we need to develop our roster the best that we possibly can, and Ryan’s a great example of someone stepping up.”
