LOS ANGELES – Personally, he hasn’t lost to UCLA in more than two years, while his team has won four in a row against the Bruins.
If Jordan McLaughlin and USC triumph again Saturday night at Pauley Pavilion, the Trojans will officially be dominating this series in a way not seen since basketballs were held together by stitches.
Seriously, USC’s most recent winning streak over UCLA of more than four games ended in the 1940s, before John Wooden coached his first game – at Indiana State Teachers College.
The momentum is pretty strong when the reference points date to a time when the NCAA Tournament was still a new concept and being won by schools such as Oklahoma A&M and Holy Cross.
All of which means the Trojans enter this latest game playing downhill and with the wind, pushed by every expectation of continuing to roll against their rivals, right?
“It’s going to make it that much harder now to get a fifth one,” McLaughlin countered. “They’re a great team. We just have to play the same way we played the four previous times, maybe even harder.”
True, UCLA figures to be abundantly amped, the normally soaring Bruins made to look almost sluggish in an 84-76 loss in January at Galen Center.
They’ll also have the home-court advantage this time, the atmosphere at Pauley Pavilion this season zany to the point where UCLA was recently reminded by the Pac-12 Conference that, in an effort to distract opponents at the free-throw line, its bear-costumed mascot really shouldn’t drop his pants, bend over and spank his furry behind.
“Even though it’s just down the street, it’s a tough environment,” said McLaughlin, speaking in general terms and not directly to the YouTube-embracing antics of Joe Bruin, the bare bear. “I’m sure they’ll be ready for us.”
A junior, McLaughlin lost to UCLA in the teams’ first meeting of his freshman season. He was injured and missed USC’s next two games against the Bruins, both also defeats.
Since then, however, he and THE Trojans have turned the rivalry into something as one-sided as a slice of buttered toast.
Their three victories last season came by an average of nearly 20 points. They fell behind, 20-10, to start the game in January but then come back to open a 15-point second-half lead and win convincingly.
The result was devoid of anything fluky, the Bruins surrendering 14 made 3-pointers and committing 17 turnovers (12 of which were Trojans steals) versus a USC zone that literally seemed to zone them out.
Afterward, UCLA’s players met separately from the coaches for several minutes before freshman point guard Lonzo Ball, who had seven of those turnovers, finally emerging to announce, “Put this loss on my back. I’ll take it.”
“We were activity on defense,” McLaughlin recalled this week. “We had high hands, fast hands. We created a lot of turnovers that led to easy offense for us.”
The Bruins have since talked about that loss as something like an alarm going off, an alarm they couldn’t simply dismiss by tapping the snooze button.
Ball said the defeat “put us back in place,” which is what sometimes has to happen to kids who become a little too sure of themselves.
At the time, the Bruins were ranked No. 8. Well, four victories later, they enter this game at No. 6, meaning the unranked Trojans remain in the shadows in this rivalry, winning streak or not.
Asked after a recent practice what happened to turn the January game in his team’s favor, USC’s coach Andy Enfield sounded like someone who thinks he’s coaching in the shadows.
“I’m not sure if you’ve checked our record, but we’re 21-5,” he explained. “So we’re a good team, too. We just played basketball. We expect to win every game we play.”
Naturally, then, that includes this one, in which oddsmakers have UCLA favored by 12 points.
Those same oddsmakers had the Bruins as seven-point favorites last month, meaning they comfortably air-balled that projection.
“We just have to focus on us, on USC,” McLaughlin said. “It doesn’t matter what they’re doing. It matters what we’re doing.”
Another win would strengthen what already is a promising NCAA Tournament case for the Trojans.
A loss would make even more interesting the possibility of these teams meeting for a third time this winter, next month in Las Vegas in the conference tournament.
First, though, the Trojans will make a run at history, a fifth consecutive victory over the Bruins, this one against both the odds and the oddballs, or whatever description fits a mooning Joe Bruin.
“You can’t come out scared,” McLaughlin said. “If you come out scared, it won’t end well for you. You gotta come out being aggressive and playing as hard as you can.”
It’s a chance for USC basketball to sell itself nationally again, to make a loud statement by pleading the fifth.
Contact the writer: jmiller@scng.com
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