LOS ANGELES — Forty-six hours until they start dancing in Las Vegas, this is all business.
There is little emotion within a near-silent Galen Center on Monday afternoon, an hour after what could be the final home practice of the year. Team managers bustle, worker bees stacking luggage and equipment to be carried to the team bus to the airport. USC assistant coaches Chris Capko and Kurt Karis get in a quick final lift. A set of Jersey Mike’s subs are set out for players on a side table. Just one cry, of something to the extent of Vegas, baby! echoes down the hall.
Captain Boogie Ellis carries steel in the lines of his face as he grabs food from the door.
“It’s a lot more detail, a lot more things to lock in,” the fifth-year senior says of facing a win-or-go-home situation in the coming week. “And gotta play every game like it’s my last.”
It very well could be, USC’s season over in a quick snap if it loses a single game in this Pac-12 Tournament, starting Wednesday against Washington. This is an unfamiliar situation for Ellis, whose previous USC teams had locked up at-large bids to the NCAA Tournament before heading to the desert for the conference tourney; these Trojans have known, ever since a crippling February loss to Stanford, that the only path to March is winning the Pac-12 Tournament in its final season. And a hugely disappointing regular season – the third-worst by record in coach Andy Enfield’s 11-year USC tenure – means USC won’t have a first-round bye, finishing as the ninth seed in the conference.
No matter. All business. This is a team few should want to face in the desert.
“Honestly, I feel like – I know we’re a nine seed or whatever, but I don’t really feel like we’re a nine seed,” Ellis said Monday. “So, I mean, whoever has to play us – we’re definitely looking to prove that … we expected to be a lot better this year.”
“But,” Ellis finished, “we kinda clicked late.”
By midseason,…
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