LOS ANGELES — His life revolves around basketball, Boogie Ellis says, and it’s apparent in his face.
That life, for years, has been carefully constructed on routine — staying later than anyone else in cardinal and gold after practices, honing his shot relentlessly, grinding in the summers. When routine doesn’t lead to results, negativity seeps into Ellis’ worldview, easy to see across the past month as USC’s season has slipped away. I’m pretty hard on myself, Ellis mumbled after Thursday’s practice; whichever way the ball bounces affects his very state of being, and it has bounced too often away in Ellis’ last year at USC.
“But you gotta stay strong,” Ellis said Thursday, stoic. “Keep pushing.”
He pushed from the very tip at Pauley Pavilion on Saturday night, potentially his final game against bitter rival UCLA in a standout USC career. At numerous points where it seemed USC could bend to the point of breaking, through an end-of-first-half implosion and late sloppiness, he and fellow captain Kobe Johnson held the Trojans together in a 62-56 win — Ellis finishing with 24 points on 9-of-18 shooting, authoring one final performance as the Mick Cronin-described “Bruin killer.”
There was little left to play for, really, on Saturday night for Ellis and USC besides simple pride. In September, his first time speaking to media in a new year, Ellis rationalized his reason for a return as a super-senior as “the opportunity to win a national championship,” a dream that’s been dashed for months. USC’s only shot at March dwindled to a run through the Pac-12 tournament as Ellis was beset by a variety of injuries, most notably a hamstring issue in mid-January, knocking him out for a few games and leaving him hobbled for weeks even when he did return.
“He came back, he looked older than me trying to play,” head coach Andy Enfield cracked postgame Saturday.
“He just wasn’t – he had no explosiveness, no change of speeds, no…
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