LOS ANGELES — They were different until they weren’t, putting on lipstick for much of Saturday night against Colorado until crunch-time beckoned and all pretense of this USC team was washed away, leading to one inexorably damning reality.
They can’t close ballgames.
They haven’t been able to close since they fumbled away a game they should’ve won against Long Beach State in early December. They couldn’t close after holding a late lead against Washington State in early January. Couldn’t close after storming back at Cal earlier this February. And they let their best performance of the season slip away against Colorado on Saturday night, 30 minutes of tremendous basketball washed away under an avalanche of KJ Simpson threes and offensive stagnation, a fourth-quarter stretch and overtime push and double-overtime fight all rendered null in a debilitating 92-89 double-overtime loss.
“We’re right there, these close games,” junior Kobe Johnson said postgame. “We got to be able to do the little stuff, the little details.”
It’s not quite that simple, though, because they’re losing the little stuff in a major way. USC (10-16, 4-11 Pac-12) was slaughtered on the glass 47-22 on Saturday, continuing a horrific trend of bigs being unable to compete on the glass. When center Joshua Morgan was called for a dubious fifth foul on a block in the first overtime, the Trojans lost any semblance of inside presence.
And by the final play, they’d lost their offensive creativity, too. Enfield appeared to draw up an action for Ellis to come off a double-pindown, but Kijani Wright and DJ Rodman seemed confused in screening, and USC helplessly scurried the ball around the perimeter until Ellis let off a 35-plus-foot heave that had absolutely zero chance of dropping.
“I made a lot of game-tying shots, made a lot of game winners, missed a lot,” Ellis said postgame. “It’s what comes with it. It’s basketball.”
The captain drooped for several seconds…
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