24 November 2007 | 12:15 am
Recap: USC 57, Miami (Ohio) 53
The Trojans (4-1) earned a trip to the championship game of the inaugural Anaheim Classic Tournament by defeating the Miami (OH) RedHawks (2-1) on Friday night at the Anaheim Convention Center, 57-53. The game was close throughout, and the Trojans trailed by four at halftime, but were able to make enough defensive adjustments at the half to close the game strongly and secure their fourth straight victory. Most importantly, they held Miami’s Tim Pollitz to seven points in the second half after he scored 14 in the first half, many on wide-open shots.
OJ Mayo led the Trojans with 21 points on 7 of 16 shooting. Daniel Hackett added 13 points, and freshman forward Davon Jefferson, playing in only his second game, picked up 7 points and had an acrobatic block. The Trojans used a seven-man rotation, with Jefferson and Angelo Johnson the only players to come off the bench. Despite not getting many good looks at the basket, USC shot 50% from the field, and held the RedHawks to 42.6%. A Mayo turnover with 22 seconds remaining gave Miami a chance to tie or win the game, but they missed on one last shot attempt.
Sunday night’s championship game (ESPN2, 8:00p PT) will pit USC against one of the best defensive teams in the nation, No. 19 Southern Illinois (3-0). And it doesn’t get easier from there; the Trojans will then play Big-12 powerhouses Oklahoma and Kansas at home, followed by a trip to New York City to take on Memphis.
Mayo scores 21 points, USC beats Miami of Ohio in Anaheim Classic (AP via Yahoo!)
USC holds on for 57-53 win (LA Times)
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Now THAT was an exciting contest. About as exciting as the San Diego game was boring. OJ finally started taking over when it counted. I’m now confident that Davon will be ready when the games start to count. He’s athletic as hell. I hope that Hackett will calm down just a bit and ramp his focus up a degree. That Tat on his right shoulder is embarrassing as crap, by the way. Didn’t tribal tats go out like 15 years ago?? Then again, ballers with tats is the biggest cliche in the book anyhow.
so says Marc, November 24th, 2007 at 2:02amFor all the pre-season talk about how the Trojans did not know how to play defense, this team actually looks like a pretty solid defensive ball club showing pretty nice defensive help especially out on the wings.
The real nice surprise is how O.J. Mayo plays defense for all the talk that he is an offensive machine. He may not be quick enough to contain a Collison/Lawson-type guard all of the time; but he should be long, strong and big enough to bother such guards from making a home in the paint on drives after drives.
The interior offense needs to improve; but the biggest area for improvement in my opinion is rebounding. Somebody other than Taj needs to step up to clean up the boards on both ends.
so says Chris, November 25th, 2007 at 2:57pm