SACRAMENTO — Senior Ayla Teegardin of Palisades held her head high on Saturday morning. A 51-37 loss to Yuba City Faith Christian in the state Division IV girls basketball final at Golden 1 Center couldn’t lessen the inspiring backstory of how she and her Dolphin teammates had already won by making it to the final despite all the trial and tribulations of the Palisades Fire that destroyed a community in January 2025.
Teegardin lost her home, spent three months in a hotel and battled to regain her teenage life.
“I struggled with a lot of anxiety coming into games,” she recalled.
Basketball and teammates kept her focused. This season has been another challenging time with practices at night and at middle schools until the high school gym was finally re-opened at the end of January.
On Saturday, Palisades (16-14) fought Faith Christian (34-1) to almost a draw at halftime, trailing 29-26. But the Dolphins scored only 11 points in the second half and had no answer for Long Beach State-bound Lauren Harris, who came in as the nation’s career three-point scoring leader while averaging 31.2 points this season. She finished with 26 points, 16 rebounds, five assists, three blocks and two steals. She made a half-court shot at the end of the first quarter.
Elly Tierney of Palisades did her best on offense with 15 points and six rebounds. Teegardin finished with three points and six rebounds. Only three players scored the entire game for Faith Christian.
The Dolphins outrebounded Faith Christian 43-33 but made only 15 of 63 shots.
Faith Christian’s Lauren Harris, the national career record holder for threes, makes half-court shot. End of 1, Faith Christian 13, Palisades 11. pic.twitter.com/iWbDdKPwOf
CHICAGO — This was hardly a masterpiece of Big Ten basketball, what with the barrage of bricks and busted possessions. Nor was it the sort of night to convince you of UCLA’s chances as a surefire conference contender.
But amid the mess of its 72-59 win over 14th-seeded Rutgers on Thursday night, UCLA showed the sort of mettle it may need to keep its season kicking this March.
It started with Donovan Dent, whose masterful month continued with his first career triple-double — and the first triple-double in Big Ten tournament history. The senior tallied 12 points, 10 rebounds and 12 assists. He and Tyler Bilodeau, who added a game-high 21 points, were the rare bright spots on offense for the Bruins.
Otherwise, UCLA struggled to find any sort of rhythm. It shot just 38% from the floor, worse than it had in any win this season. And still, the Bruins were in control for most of the game after pulling away early in the second half.
None of that will fly against No. 3 seed Michigan State on Friday at 6 p.m. PDT, which beat UCLA by 23 points the last time they met.
But until Thursday it’d been quite some time since UCLA actually managed to win away from home. Not since Jan. 29 had it won outside of L.A., and only once this season had it won outside of the Pacific time zone.
For a while, it didn’t seem like UCLA intended to win Thursday, either. Even as Rutgers gave it every chance to pull away.
The Bruins did shut down Rutgers’ Tariq Francis, who was fresh off a 29-point performance in a first-round win over Minnesota. Francis didn’t score until the nine-minute mark in the second half. He finished with six points on two-of-11 shooting.
The two teams spent most of the first half trading wasted possessions and taking turns with their respective shooting slumps. Four minutes scoreless for Rutgers. Three scoreless for UCLA. Four scoreless for Rutgers. Then three scoreless for UCLA. Back and forth they went in their futility.
The Bruins had plenty of chances to build a lead early. While Rutgers struggled to find rhythm on offense, settling mostly for contested shots inside the arc, UCLA got its share of open shots all around the floor. It just wasn’t able to hit many of them. Both teams shot a meager 31% before halftime.
Those shots fell more frequently in the second half, as UCLA pushed its lead to 15. The Bruins still struggled to put the Knights away, until Dent took matters into his own hands late, pushing UCLA to victory.
CHICAGO — The eventual end of the USC men’s basketball season came the same way that it fizzled out during the past month, with yet another second-half collapse that featured the added pain of overtime.
The Trojans led the Huskies by 13 in the second half and had chances to win at the end of regulation and overtime, only to miss all three potential game-winning or game-tying shots and go 2-for-5 from the free-throw line in overtime. For a team that was once in NCAA tournament consideration before stumbling, that failure to finish was a persistent flaw.
USC guard Alijah Arenas talks with coach Eric Musselman during the Trojans’ loss to the Huskies in the Big Ten tournament on Wednesday in Chicago.
(Michael Reaves / Getty Images)
“That’s been the story of our last eight games,” Musselman said. “I think we’ve led at halftime four of our last eight games, and as a group, we haven’t figured out how to close games, the last 20 minutes with a lead. It’s a disappointing last eight games of the season. I thought up until that point we played good basketball.”
With the Trojans likely to decline any postseason invitation, Musselman said, he was headed to the team hotel Tuesday night to get back to work filling out next season’s recruiting class, starting with more freshmen before the transfer portal officially opens next month.
That group already includes two top-30 recruits in the Ratliff twins, Adonis and Darius, but if USC learned anything from the way this season ended, all too similar to the way last season ended, it’s that whatever depth and talent Musselman has assembled in his two years at USC hasn’t been enough, whether that’s freshmen or transfers.
“We want a blend of both,” Musselman said. “It’s early in our tenure, and we’ve got to figure out a way to get better than what we’ve done the last two years.”
Tuesday, the Trojans had no shortage of chances to fend off the end.
They had a double-digit lead with 13 minutes to play. They had the ball at the end of regulation with the score tied. They had a chance to win it in overtime and were gifted a last-chance shot to tie it.
They missed all three pivotal shots — the first two by Kam Woods, the last a 3-pointer by Jordan Marsh — to see a game they once led comfortably slip away again and again.
“On the last one, I feel like I missed Ezra [Ausar] on that cut,” said Woods, a grad transfer who joined the team in midseason. “Coach trusted me with the ball in my hands, and I feel like I let him down.”
Woods finished with 24 points while Jacob Cofie scored 14, Marsh 13 and Ausar and Ryan Cornish 10 each for 13th-seeded USC (18-14) as the 12th-seeded Huskies (16-16) beat the Trojans for the third time this season.
Freshman Alijah Arenas, who led the Trojans in scoring in both games without Baker-Mazara, was held to six points on 3-for-10 shooting and sat out the final six minutes of regulation and all but eight seconds of overtime. Musselman said that was his decision, as was the virtual absence of senior Terrance Williams, who played only one minute.
That left USC with what was essentially a six-player rotation to conclude a season that began without the injured Arenas and ended without Rodney Rice and Amarion Dickerson, both hurt, as well as the departed Baker-Mazara — all of which factored into Musselman’s position on any postseason plans.
“I haven’t had in-depth conversations with the administration yet about that, but I would assume we’re not going to play, just based on the number of bodies and how we played the last eight games,” Musselman said.
It was not all that long ago that USC was thinking about the NCAA tournament. Winners of the Maui Invitational, USC was 18-6 and above .500 in the Big Ten standings after a February 8 win at Penn State, solidly in a workable position on the NCAA tournament bubble.
But as the injuries mounted and momentum waned, second-half struggles just like the Trojans’ on Tuesday became an increasingly fatal flaw as they slumped to their longest losing streak in a decade. The loss to Washington compounded the misery of a second straight frustrating season, in familiar fashion.
“As a team, we faced a lot of adversity,” Cofie said. “I felt like we did a good job sticking with it and trying to play for each other. We had to deal with a lot of injuries. I felt like that played a huge deal in it. We still fought. We tried our best.”
Lakers center Jaxson Hayes, left, dives for a loose ball next to Knicks forward OG Anunoby in the first half Sunday.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Hayes crawled across the floor for loose balls. Marcus Smart stepped in front of driving opponents. Jarred Vanderbilt leaped into the laps of front-row fans.
With energy and focus from every player, the Lakers delivered one of their best defensive efforts of the season despite circumstances that could have made Sunday’s game a snoozer.
The Lakers were playing their third game in four days. Losing an hour of sleep because of daylight saving time had Rui Hachimura sleepwalking into the arena Sunday morning for a 12:30 p.m. tip. Hoping to wake himself up, the Lakers forward said he got into the hot tub when he arrived.
Players tried to hype themselves up in the locker room by blasting music. Instead of listing three defensive keys before the game, coaches whittled the game plan to one focus: multiple efforts.
“It wasn’t gonna be an offensive game,” coach JJ Redick said. “This was gonna be a gritty, tough game that we had to win with effort. And we did that.”
Smart led that effort with a game-high plus-27 in 29 minutes and 17 seconds. He drew two charges. His signature moment didn’t even show up in the game play-by-play. After Luka Doncic turned the ball over with 2.2 seconds remaining in the third quarter, Smart hustled back to force Jordan Clarkson to pass the ball at the buzzer, keeping the Knicks from getting a last-second layup attempt. Smart walked to the bench with his arms extended like a defensive back who had just broken up a touchdown pass.
The Knicks were held to less than 100 points for only the seventh time and had their fourth-worst three-point shooting performance of the season, going eight for 34. The Lakers went nearly five minutes without scoring in the fourth quarter, but held on by forcing eight turnovers.
“It was not a perfect game,” said Doncic, who led the Lakers with 35 points on 11-for-25 shooting. “But we fight at the defensive end. I think we did a great job. It says a lot about the team, bringing this much energy in a game like this.”
Eric Musselman sat behind a microphone at the bitter end of a bitter regular season for USC, armed only with the same explanations for how a once-hopeful season could come so undone.
There were unfortunate injuries to point to, he said, and continuity issues to contend with. Then there was the pesky problem of Big Ten travel. And at home, well … “Our home court has not been much of a home-court advantage,” Musselman said, after UCLA chants rang out through Galen Center all night.
But none of that rationale, as true or convenient as it might sound, could adequately explain how the Trojans ended up here at their season’s nadir, with seven straight losses heading into the Big Ten tournament, the latest an 89-68 rout at the hands of their crosstown rival.
The seventh of those losses looked strikingly similar to the other six. Once again, USC’s defense collapsed in the second half, as UCLA shot better than 60%. And once again, the Trojans’ streaky shooting and lack of presence on the glass made it impossible for them to keep up.
“Obviously our struggling down the stretch has not been characteristic of our past programs,” Musselman said. “It’s actually been the exact opposite.”
Yet at USC, it’s all we’ve seen through two seasons with Musselman at the helm. The Trojans lost eight of 10 to finish out the regular season a year ago, and at the time, the coach also blamed injuries to their top two guards, Desmond Claude and Wesley Yates, for the collapse.
USC guard Alijah Arenas, right, drives past UCLA guard Skyy Clark during the Trojans’ loss Saturday night at Galen Center.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Injuries proved even more devastating this season. USC was without five-star freshman Alijah Arenas until late January and lost Rodney Rice, its starting point guard, to an injury in November. He referred to his Trojans as “the most injured team in college basketball.”
“It’s not an excuse,” Musselman said. “It’s a fact.”
But there were inexcusable losses along the way, losses that didn’t hinge on one player’s absence — and might’ve singlehandedly changed the conversation over USC’s season. Among them: A second-half collapse at home to Washington, a blown lead in the final minute to Oregon and an unraveling at the hands of Northwestern, which was winless in conference at the time.
Even still, the Trojans might have salvaged their tournament hopes if they found something down the stretch. Instead, the team’s top scorer, Chad Baker-Mazara, was dismissed last weekend. Musselman wouldn’t offer any further comment on that decision. But by Saturday night, USC looked as lost as ever.
“We just have to stay together,” said senior Terrance Williams. “I feel like when adversity hits, sometimes we tend to go our separate ways. We’ve got to just stick together, man.”
It looked, for a brief time, like USC might manage that against UCLA. Even as busloads of Bruins fans descended on Galen Center, turning USC’s arena into hostile territory, the Trojans showed signs of life early on. Midway through the first half, the Trojans had played their crosstown rivals to a tie, 21-21.
Any hope stitched together during that stretch came apart just a few minutes later, though. USC hit just four shots the rest of the half, while UCLA hit 10 of 12 at one point. For the final 4:40 before halftime, the Trojans didn’t pull down a single rebound.
Arenas would do his best to drag USC back from the brink. He scored 13 in the second half and 20 overall. During one spurt, the freshman put up eight points in less than four minutes, cutting UCLA’s lead to 11.
But the spark was brief. The Bruins came firing back, led by Donovan Dent, who basically took a blowtorch to the Trojans’ defensive plans. After scoring a season-high 30 points against USC in their last meeting, Dent tallied 25 in the rematch.
“We had a problem staying in front of Dent,” said forward Jacob Cofie. “Eleven for 15, that’s unacceptable.”
That was just the start of USC’s issues. But as its season continues to descend further into disaster, Musselman assured that things were still moving in the right direction ahead of Wednesday’s game against Washington in the conference tournament.
“We feel this is an NCAA tournament team if we were healthy,” Musselman said. “We have no doubt that it was — or would be.”
Except now, we’ll never know for sure. And after a seventh-straight loss and a second straight season left spiraling, hypotheticals could only carry USC and its coach so far.
USC’s decision to dismiss top scorer and three-point shooter Chad Baker-Mazara on the doorstep of the postseason left many wondering Sunday why coach Eric Musselman would willingly sabotage his team’s already-tenuous hopes of making the NCAA tournament.
To Gilbert Arenas, the former NBA star and podcast host whose son, Alijah, is a freshman guard with the Trojans, the move was particularly baffling. So he took to social media Sunday, wearing Baker-Mazara’s No. 4 USC jersey, to share his frustration.
“Right before the tournament? This is what we’re doing?” Arenas said in the video. “Our best player? Mr. I-Get-Buckets? Every night, he brings it every night. Guaranteed 18, 20 every night.”
“When you the best player on the team, whatever you say, you right,” he continued.
LOS ANGELES, CA – DECEMBER 17, 2025: USC Trojans guard Chad Baker-Mazara (4) shoot a foul shot against the UTSA Roadrunners at Galen Center on December 17, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
But the move to part ways with Baker-Mazara was not based on an isolated incident, a person familiar with the decision but not authorized to discuss it publicly told The Times, but rather a culmination of a season’s worth of issues that boiled over after the second half of Saturday’s loss to Nebraska.
The Trojans were trailing by three points three minutes into the second half when Baker-Mazara took off in transition after Huskers forward Pryce Sandfort, who was driving for a layup. Baker-Mazara closed the gap and swatted the ball. Then he fell hard on the hardwood.
Baker-Mazara had missed three games last month with a Grade I knee sprain and sat out practices throughout the season with other nagging minor injuries. But after a few seconds lying still on the court, he walked on his own down the Galen Center tunnel toward the USC locker room.
Baker-Mazara emerged from the tunnel a couple minutes later with a noticeable limp. He took a seat in a courtside seat on the baseline, two chairs down from injured guard Rodney Rice.
The sight of Baker-Mazara sitting away from the rest of the team sparked questions after the game, but the seating arrangement wasn’t that unusual for Baker-Mazara, who’d sat there at various times this season. What was odd was how Baker-Mazara handled the rest of the half after he told the USC staff he wasn’t able to resume play.
As USC unraveled without him in the second half, Baker-Mazara was mostly detached from the action. At one point, he went behind the USC bench and chatted with fans in the first row.
The incident on its own could have been innocuous. But at the end of a season filled with similar such moments, patience had worn thin.
By the next morning, Baker-Mazara was no longer with the team.
USC did not disclose the reasons for his departure. But the staff was well aware when they brought in the sixth-year senior last spring that his long history in college hoops was littered with similarly volatile moments. USC was Baker-Mazara’s fifth school in six seasons.
“There will never be a dull moment,” Musselman said in May. “Might be that I’ve got a little more on my plate.”
Baker-Mazara spent his freshman season at Duquesne before transferring to San Diego State. He was named Mountain West as a sophomore, but was kicked off the team by coach Brian Dutcher after he skipped classes, failed tests, missed assignments and fell so far behind on his classes he couldn’t catch up.
Baker-Mazara told the San Diego Union Tribune last spring that it was “a growing-up moment” for him. He assured he’d “learned [his] lesson.”
USC forward Chad Baker-Mazara goes up to dunk under pressure from Indiana forward Sam Alexis at the Galen Center on Feb. 3.
(Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)
“Some people have to go through it in different ways,” Baker-Mazara told the Union Tribune. “I had to go through it that way. … My parents were both mad. That was weeks of earfuls: ‘Man, what are you doing?’ It was weeks. I had to get my ear chewed off a couple times.”
He ended up at Northwest Florida State, a junior college in Niceville, Fla., before signing with Auburn. At the time, according to the Union Tribune, Dutcher spoke with then-Auburn coach Bruce Pearl on the phone. He told him that Baker-Mazara’s issues weren’t on the court, but that he “just needs to get his life in better order, be more organized, be more on time, do all the little things.”
Pearl and Auburn proved to be a good fit; though, Baker-Mazara earned some ire there, too, after he was ejected in the second half of Auburn’s two-point tournament loss to rival Alabama for elbowing a Tide player in the back of the head. Pearl later defended him on social media.
Pearl, now a college basketball analyst, said Monday in light of Baker-Mazara’s dismissal that the guard was “an incredibly talented kid with a real gift,” but that his “emotions at times have gotten the better of him.”
“He helped us get to the Final Four, we won a league championship with him,” Pearl said during FS1’s Wake Up Barstool on Monday. “On a good day, he would’ve been about the 20th-best player taken in the NBA Draft last year.
“But we all know that Chad has bad days.”
Routinely this season, Baker-Mazara jolted the Trojans’ offense to life. When Rodney Rice went down with a season-ending shoulder injury in November, Baker-Mazara became even more vital to USC’s offense and responded to the call, averaging 26 points per game during the Trojans’ first seven without Rice. Even in his final game against Nebraska, Baker-Mazara scored 14 points in 16 first-half minutes. Against UCLA, he knocked down three consecutive three-pointers. The previous Saturday, he scored 14 straight.
But there were also stretches of the season during which Baker-Mazara’s status remained mysterious He sat out practices ahead of Big Ten play and dealt with what was deemed, at the time, to be a nagging neck injury, only to show up in the Trojans’ lineup against Michigan and Michigan State. He averaged just 20 minutes across both games.
By March, Baker-Mazara’s more volatile moments had started to outweigh his other contributions in the eyes of USC’s staff. Though, with time running out to save their season, how the Trojans plan to replace that production is a question everyone — not just Gilbert Arenas — is asking.
Another winnable game was slipping away, another frustrating performance by USC unraveling in painfully familiar fashion, when Jaden Brownell lifted up from the corner for a wide-open three-pointer, offering a split-second of hope in an otherwise hopeless second half.
But the shot clanked away. A collective sigh from the cardinal-and-gold faithful rippled through Galen Center, only to be swallowed up seconds later when Nebraska’s Pryce Sandfort, who finished with 32 points, knocked down a three-pointer of his own. That’s when USC’s own arena exploded with a deafening Big Red roar, loud enough to make you forget you were in Los Angeles — or that these lifeless Trojans had once looked like a real NCAA tournament team.
There were still more than nine minutes remaining after that in Saturday’s brutal 82-67 loss, though that roar from the Nebraska faithful might as well have been the exclamation point. Whether it becomes the punctuation mark on a frustrating second season for USC under coach Eric Musselman was still to be determined.
The Trojans have lost five consecutive games as of Saturday and sit in a tie for 11th in the Big Ten. They still have two regular-season games remaining to bolster their middling tournament resume, both of which they can ill afford to lose.
A midweek matchup at Washington looms especially large. A loss to the Huskies, who are 14-15, would make climbing back from the bubble brink especially harrowing. A rivalry rematch awaits after that against UCLA.
“I still think we could have a successful season,” forward Terrance Williams II said Saturday . “I had that positive mindset coming into the season. I still have that positive mindset. The season’s not over. … We can change the trajectory of the season very quickly.”
Nebraska forward Pryce Sandfort (21) drives past USC forward Terrance Williams II (5) during the first half Saturday.
(William Liang / Associated Press)
Nothing, though, about Saturday’s second half suggested USC was poised for positive change.
The Trojans positioned themselves in the first half to make a very different statement Saturday. They took advantage of foul trouble from Nebraska point guard Sam Hoiberg and led by five points at halftime. Chad Baker-Mazara had already poured in 14 points, and they barely needed freshman Alijah Arenas, who was left out of the starting lineup and played only nine minutes. “They had belief,” Musselman said.
Yet after shooting 52% from the field in the first half, the Trojans were suddenly unable to find the target in the second. For the first five minutes of the half, a dunk from Jacob Cofie was USC’s only basket. During another five-minute stretch in the second half, USC couldn’t even manage a dunk.
Its issues only got worse when Baker-Mazara fell hard trying to block a lay-in. He didn’t play the rest of the game, as Musselman said Baker-Mazara told the staff he was unable to go.
“They played great in the second half,” Musselman said, “and we did not play very good.”
The Trojans didn’t fare much better on the glass, either, as Nebraska more than doubled USC’s total rebounds (22 to 10) after halftime.
The defense followed suit, with Nebraska piling up points in the paint at will. Sixteen of the Huskers’ first 20 points in the second half came on either dunks or lay-ins as USC’s defense lacked any semblance of urgency.
“I feel like they came out with more energy to be honest,” Williams said. “The first couple possessions, you could see it. They wanted it more than we did.”
How that’s still the case, after several similarly frustrating second halves this season, is still unclear.
“Second halves, they’re hard,” Brownell said. “We have to accept that and get ready quicker in the locker room, get our mental right and then come in and be ready.”
But with the Trojans on the very brink of the tournament bubble, time is quickly running out on that possibility.
As his USC team slid further off the NCAA tournament bubble, falling flat against its fiercest rival, frustrated coach Eric Musselman couldn’t help but lament what might have been.
If the Trojans had Rodney Rice, maybe things would have gone differently in his second season.
“I haven’t really talked about it in a long time,” Musselman said. “But we’ve got three games left, so I’m gonna bring it up now. To run our offense and stuff without a guy like him is problematic for sure.”
Of course, after losing 81-62 to crosstown rival UCLA,, there wasn’t much else for USC to find solace in Tuesday night. Maybe Rice, who has been out since late November, would have elevated the Trojans’ ailing offense. Maybe freshman Alijah Arenas, who didn’t debut until late January, could have found his stride faster with a full offseason.
No amount of what-ifs, however, will fix what ails USC during its final three games. The loss to UCLA was its fourth straight. As of Tuesday night, the Trojans were firmly out of the tournament field, a fact that Musselman was well aware of.
That’s not set in stone yet. But the question now is whether the Trojans even have the capacity to climb back into the March mix.
That path back for USC would certainly be smoother with a more potent offense. Sixth-year senior Chad Baker-Mazara led the team with 25 points against UCLA in spite of playing through a sore knee.
But the rest of the Trojans offense shot under 30% — another issue that Musselman traced back to Rice’s absence.
“The lack of shooting is really hurting us,” Musselman said. “I haven’t really talked about it in a long time. But not having Rodney Rice’s shooting is killing us. It kills our spacing. It kills our help to the ball.”
The arrival of Arenas, the Trojans highly touted freshman, was supposed to solve that. Instead, 10 games into his college career, Arenas is struggling mightily with his offensive efficiency.
USC coach Eric Musselman reacts to the Trojans’ loss to UCLA at Pauley Pavilion on Tuesday.
(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)
Arenas had four first-half turnovers in nine minutes and didn’t hit a shot from the field until midway through the second half. The freshman has shot just 8 of 29 over his last three games. He finished Tuesday with 10 points, four rebounds and five turnovers.
“It’s a learning curve for him,” Musselman said. “He’s an incredible talent who has an awesome ceiling, and he’s got an incredible future. But in a game like tonight — he’s learning. You can see it out there. He’s learning on the fly.”
There’s not much time left to learn. The Trojans will face No. 12 Nebraska on Saturday, before traveling to Washington, which beat them earlier in the season, a few days later. A rematch with UCLA awaits at Galen Center the following Saturday.
USC won’t stand much of a chance against that slate if it can’t find some consistency on either end, but the Trojans had their moments Tuesday. They fired out to an early lead thanks to Baker-Mazara, who followed up a 13-point outburst Saturday by knocking down three consecutive 3’s in a three-minute stretch.
Later, near the midway mark of the second half, Baker-Mazara hit another 3 to cut the UCLA lead to just five points. And for a brief moment, it seemed USC might find a way.
But then, in the waning seconds of the shot clock, UCLA star guard Donovan Dent let a deep three pointer fly with 10 minutes remaining. It swished. A sold-out crowd at Pauley Pavilion roared.
Dent finished with 30 points, while the Trojans never recovered. Musselman, meanwhile, was left thinking of something his wife, Danyelle, had said to him.
“Take a 20-pointer scorer off of any team and see what they do,” Musselman recalled his wife saying. “Take Dent off of them and let’s see what they do. That’s a fact.”
But the facts, for USC, are pretty grim at this point. And with just three games remaining, time is running out for the Trojans to change that.
One team was coming off its highest high, the other off its lowest low, but recent history matters little whenever UCLA and USC meet.
Tuesday night’s matchup inside Pauley Pavilion was no exception, as the men’s basketball programs faced off in the first of two key Big Ten clashes in 11 days and the host Bruins sent their blue-clad fans home happy with an 81-62 victory.
Donovan Dent led the charge with 30 points and seven assists, Trent Perry had 13 points and four assists, Xavier Booker had 11 points and three blocks and forward Tyler Bilodeau added 13 points and nine rebounds as the Bruins (19-9 overall, 11-6 in the Big Ten) improved to 15-1 and stayed in seventh place in conference play with three games remaining in the regular season.
In the latter stages of the second half, UCLA made 10 of 12 shots and led by nine with 5:43 left. A three-pointer by Eric Freeny extended the margin to 14 with 2:01 remaining. UCLA scored 32 points in the paint and scored 15 points off turnovers.
Three days earlier, UCLA pulled off its biggest win of the year, rallying from 23 points down to stun 10th-ranked Illinois in overtime and rode that momentum to overwhelm its crosstown rival, still smarting from a 71-70 defeat to lowly Oregon on Saturday at Galen Center.
Both teams wore their dark jerseys for the 266th meeting between the teams and UCLA improved to 150-116 in a series dating to 1928 when UCLA joined the Pacific Coast Conference.
UCLA forward Tyler Bilodeau is defended by USC forward Jacob Cofie in the first half.
(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)
Chad Baker-Mazara was hot early for the Trojans, hitting four three-pointers and totaling 14 by the break, but no other USC player had more than four in the first 20 minutes. The Bruins did not lead until Bilodeau banked in a 15-foot jumper to edge them in front 8-7 4:39 into the game.
UCLA went on a 12-2 run in just under five minutes to build a 29-23 lead while USC was in the midst of a one-for-eight drought from the field, but the Trojans pulled to within two on Ezra Ausar’s layup with 3:30 left in the half.
Booker’s dunk ignited a 7-0 run to put the Bruins up 36-27 and Dent swished a 15-footer that beat the buzzer and gave UCLA a 38-29 halftime lead.
Dent had 19 points at intermission and outscored USC by himself in the last nine minutes of the half, 7-6. He finished five of six from three-point range.
USC forward Chad Baker-Mazara, guard Alijah Arenas, UCLA forward Tyler Bilodeau and USC forward Terrance Williams II vie for the ball in the first half.
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)
UCLA stretched its lead to 11 points five minutes into the second half as the Trojans went cold, shooting one for 11 and going 3:49 without scoring a basket. It was a frustrating night for USC star guard Alijah Arenas, who had four points and five turnovers when he was whistled for a charging foul — his third — running over Perry with 16:45 left.
He finished with 10 points but Baker-Mazara was the leading scorer with 25 points for the Trojans (18-10, 7-10), who dropped their fourth straight.
Nicolás Fernández scored on a penalty kick in the second half and New York City FC tied the Galaxy 1-1 in a season opener on Sunday before a sellout crowd of 30,510 at Dignity Health Sports Park.
Newcomer João Klauss needed 90 seconds to win the hearts of Galaxy fans, scoring with assists from Marco Reus and Joseph Paintsil for a 1-0 lead. L.A. worked a cash-for-player trade with St. Louis City to acquire Klauss on a one-year deal, hoping he’ll ease the loss of superstar Riqui Puig for a second straight season after complications from a torn ACL.
Los Angeles maintained the lead until Emiro Garces was sent off the field for a second yellow card, setting up a successful PK for Fernández that tied it in the 66th minute and left the Galaxy a man short. Fernández scored five goals in 19 appearances with L.A. last season.
Novak Micovic did not have a save in his 25th career start for the Galaxy — 20 of them coming last season when the 24-year-old allowed 37 goals.
Matt Freese, the reigning goalkeeper of the year, saved six shots for NYCFC — four in the first half. Freese had eight clean sheets in 31 starts last season on his way to the award.
NYCFC is coming off a loss to eventual MLS Cup champion Inter Miami in the Eastern Conference Final last season.
The Galaxy are hoping to rebound from a disastrous season that saw them endure a league-record 16-match winless streak — one year after beating the New York Red Bulls to win the MLS Cup.
A season of frustratingly unfortunate events for USC had led here, to this nightmarish crescendo at the one-minute mark Saturday, in a must-win matchup.
Through a roller-coaster afternoon, the Trojans had navigated one wave after another, riding several hot streaks and surviving the cold ones, knowing full well that their NCAA tournament hopes hinged on a win over Oregon, one of the Big Ten’s worst teams.
All that stress seemed to subside as USC took a six-point lead with 70 seconds remaining. Any rational onlooker would assume that the Trojans had held on for good, dispatching of the Ducks.
But then Oregon scored on a layup. It stole the ball back. And it hit a three-pointer.
USC coach Eric Musselman reacts after a play during the Trojans’ loss to Oregon Saturday at the Galen Center.
(Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)
USC clung to a one-point lead as freshman Alijah Arenas stepped back for a jumper that clanged away. Kam Woods missed a tip. Then, Oregon got the ball back and drew a foul.
Two free throws from Oregon’s Nate Bittle dealt USC one final, unbelievable blow to their Saturday — and perhaps their season — handing the Trojans a devastating 71-70 loss.
Their hopes of making the NCAA tournament aren’t necessarily dead as of Saturday. Four games still remain for the Trojans to build their case before the Big Ten tournament. But two of those come against UCLA and another against Nebraska, one of the best teams in the Big Ten this season.
USC had hoped Chad Baker-Mazara‘s return from injury would help lift them to a victory Saturday. Baker-Mazara led all scorers with 21, but he also fouled out late, during that final possession.
Arenas struggled most of the afternoon, before scoring 11 in the second half. But it was his turnover in the final seconds that ultimately handed Oregon the win
Baker-Mazara hadn’t played since the beginning of February, and in back-to-back losses to Illinois and Ohio State, the Trojans undoubtedly missed his spark. If not for a late game winner in State College from Arenas, they would’ve dropped all three games played without Baker-Mazara.
The circumstances ultimately left USC in a must-win scenario Saturday, if it hoped to continue clinging to the edge of the NCAA tournament bubble. Oregon had, on the other hand, spent most of the season in the Big Ten cellar. It entered Saturday’s matinee with losses in 11 of its last 12 games.
There was no such urgency in Baker-Mazara upon his return. The sixth-year senior sang and danced his way through warm-ups, before opening the game on a stationary bike in the corner of the arena.
But upon checking in, he jolted the Trojans offense to life with 13 straight points.
The boost Baker-Mazara provided eventually ran out of gas. USC hit just three of its final 14 shots before halftime, and Oregon stormed out in front.
The Ducks did the same in the second half, albeit in much more devastating fashion, leaving USC with a much harder road ahead.
