USC Men's Basketball Stresses Me Out

I'm not sure what lead me to watch last night's UC Irvine-USC matchup, but I did. I'm kind of glad I did, because it allowed me to take a look at a Big Six program in sore need of a change.

Now, though I'm glad I watched the game, the act of watching the game was scressful. Not stressful, scressful. That fact that a major school like USC struggled against an okay mid-major (UCI was picked third in the Big West preseason poll....but it's the Big West....) and then lost irked my soul.

And they looked bad losing. They shot 40% from the field, took ten fewer shots than the Anteaters, and turned the ball over 16 times. Omar Oraby was the only bright spot for the Trojans scoring 12 points in the second half. Senior leader Jio Fontan was anything but, scoring only 2 points off of 1-6 shooting and turning the ball over 4 times. Irvine shot only slightly better (42%), but Daman Starring was able to rack up 23 points. UCI actually had moments where they shot horribly, and the fact that they did shootaround at their school since they were only 45 minutes away instead of at the Galen Center showed. Yet USC still couldn't capitalize.

It was scressful.

It's not as if I just helicoptered in on one game and formed my opinion on that. I've actually seen them in a few more instances in the calender year of 2012. First, there was their Pac-12 Tournament game last season against UCLA at Staples. The Bruins quickly escorted the Trojans out of the building to the tune of 55-40. USC shot 29%, and only five of the seven players that played scored. Three of those seven players have transferred to other programs this season.

Then there was the beatdown they received in Maui at the hands of Illinois. The final score was 94-64, but it was 57-26 at the half. Statistically, USC actually was okay, just off from three (25%) and just below average from the field (44%). They also managed to lead Illinois in the second half 38-37. However it was too little, too late, as the Fighting Illini shot 68.8% and went on a 50-20 run in the first half that put things out of reach early.

Then there was Thursday night. USC came out with an uninspired effort. There was at one point late in the second half when they tried to make a run, but like the Illinois game it was too little, too late.

The Trojans are now 0-3 in games I have watched, and 4-8 (0-1) between the first game I watched and the last one.

It shouldn't be this way. It's shouldn't be this "scressful" to watch USC basketball.

USC plays basketball in the Pac-12 (a pretigous hoops conference) in Los Angeles (a beautiful, entertaining, vibrant metropolitan area AND a decent place to discover high school talent) in the Galen Center (a beautiful 10,000-seat arena). I understand a team hitting a down year in a major conference, but to be this bad over a year-and-a-half span (10-33 from last season to today) with that much working for you is mind-boggling. And they're getting left behind in their own conference: They are the only team below .500 this year in the non-conference schedule.

I can't help but point the finger at Kevin O'Neill. Nothing about his record screams "winner". His record simply shrugs and says "meh". He is in his 16th season as a college head coach. He has made the tournament only four times, and has advanced past the first round once (a 1994 Sweet Sixteen appearance with Marquette). At USC, he has only made one tournament appearance: 2011, where they lost by 13 to eventual Final Four participant VCU.

After the UCI game, Kevin O'Neill pointed out the team's lack of effort in the first half:

"For whatever reason, we ease into every first half," O'Neill said. "We won the second half, but that doesn't matter because we were down by 12 at the half at home."

Also, this:

O'Neill characterized the team as a "rudderless ship in terms of effort and energy.

And then, this:

"The bottom line is, we have a responsibility as individuals to prepare for games and play as hard as we can, and until we do that, we're going to find ourselves on the short end of a lot of things," he said.

But why? 11 games into the season, and the team is still lacking effort? USC is in a conference where they could walk into the NCAA Tournament as long as they play hard. They just have to beat the teams put in front of them by the AD and they can earn an at-large berth. Yet they still lack effort? Lack of talent is one thing. Lack of cohesion is one thing. But considering that they have good talent on paper and neither O'Neill nor Eric Wise, who was also quoted in the story, cited chemistry, then those aren't the cases.

It falls on the coach, either he is not motivating his troops to get up for each game and play 100% for 40 minutes, or he's recruiting guys that lack the work ethic to at least be competitve in the Pac 12.

For all the talk about Ben Howland being a "Fired Man Walking", I'm surprised there isn't any about Kevin O'Neill possibly being shown the door.

Come to think of it, there isn't much talk about USC basketball at all. That's unfortunate. When I was looking for reaction online to the UCI loss, I found little. When I was scouring Twitter for talk about the game, I didn't find much of that either. ESPNLA doesn't even have much coverage of the men's basketball team. It's all football. Football rules at Southern Cal.

That has to change. It's one thing to be a football school, but the least the USC administration could do is work to make their men's basketball team presentable.

Now, to be fair, I'm sure that Kevin O'Neill was hired as a departure from Tim Floyd. Floyd was accused of providing improper benefits to OJ Mayo to get him to come to the school. An NCAA investigation into the issue lead to self-imposed sanctions that vacated 21 wins and saw them withdraw from conference and national postseason consideration in 2009-10, O'Neill's first season.

The mandate on him was probably to focus on graduating players, and he has done a fair job of that with a APR in 2010-2011 of 960. We shall see how the 2011-12 APR looks somewhere down the line. However, success off the court does not necessarily have to forgo success on the court. Teams like Stanford, Duke, and Notre Dame have shown that you can get good players and still keep your academics up. USC needs a coach that can bring in smart AND good, hard-working players. I'm not sure what Kevin O'Neill is bringing in.

Again, I haven't seen much talk about O'Neill going out the door like I have heard about Howland so it might be a longshot to see Kevin going out the door mid-season. Time will tell how much longer AD Pat Haden can tolerate this underacheiving men's hoops program before changes are made.

In the meantime, I'm prepared for more "scressful" hoops as USC approaches their conference schedule.

Celtics vs. Bulls: LIVE From The United Center

On Tuesday, I was able to see the Bulls play the Celtics. I was excited about the opportunity because of my love for the NBA and the sheer awesomeness of seeing it live. I was originally concerned about the Bulls' chances on this night as they had lost the previous night in Memphis. But I would soon see that the Bulls would do just fine at dispatching the struggling Celtics

I got to the arena right at tip-off. Upon taking my seats in the 300 level, I realized that I had forgotten how big the United Center. While I knew that the UC seats over 21,000 people, and I had been to a few Bulls games and several other events before, it was still a shock to see just how spacious the building was. Even after 18 years, the United Center is still one of the best arenas in the country.

I had come into the game worrying about how the Bulls would do against the Celtics. The Bulls just played the night before on the road and lost. That 80-71 decision against the Memphis Grizzlies was the lowest point total for Chicago in about six years. There was also the fact that the Bulls had lost to the Celtics at the UC earlier in the season. I figured it was going to be all bad.

However, I had not taken into account that the Celtics had lost the first two games of their three game road trip by an average decision of 102-89. The Celtics as a whole have been struggling so far this season, and I had the privilege to witness those struggles in realtime. Any fears I had of the Bulls losing went away when Chicago went on a modest run in the middle of the second quarter.

Coming into the game, all of the previews I came across (on NBA.com and on ESPN Radio 1000) highlighted the fact that the Bulls needed to stop Rondo. The Bulls did not do that, as he went on to lead all scorers with 26 points and 8 assists. However, he was one of the few bright spots for Boston. I noticed that Rondo would occasionally break out a behind-the-back pass, even when it didn't seem necessary. I guess he just did it because he could. Hey, why not?

The Bulls did quite a few things right to get this win: 1) the beat Boston in the post and 2) they were effective on offense. In terms of 1), Boston was out-rebounded 43-35, and out-rebounded defensively 31-24. The Bulls also out-blocked the Celtics 10-2. In terms of 2), six players were in double-figures for Chicago, including 21 for both Carlos Boozer and Luol Deng. Boozer had a double-double (21/10) and Joakim Noah had a triple-double (11/13/10). I didn't realize Noah had a triple-double until midway through the 4th quarter when he went to the bench for a little bit. I had only been noticing his negative aspects throughout the game; is issues with footwork at times, stagnating the offense when he would just stand there when he got the ball, and his three turnovers. However, when I saw he had a triple-double, his better moments began popping up in my mind. He was definitely a huge part of the team effort that lead to this Bulls win.

Another key part to the win was Nate Robinson, who came off the bench and scored 18 points. The way he was playing, however, I figured he had scored 50 before I saw the final box score. He made all five of the Bulls' threes and attempted all but two of their nine threes. He was all over the place out on the court and he was not afraid to shoot the basketball. That's exactly what the Bulls got him for.

The crowd was cool. For the most part, it was more subdued than I expected, but there were plenty of moments where people were excited and up on their feet. The loudest I heard everyone was during a timeout late in the game when they had the Donut Race. This is when they would have three different virtual Dunkin Donuts products race on the UC scoreboard and the product that won would earn a free prize for any fans that had them on a ticket that was handed to them at the front gate. Of course, there was free stuff on the line. Of course people got excited.

And speaking of free stuff, everyone in the arena earned free Big Macs because the Bulls reached 100 points.

Needless to say, I had a great time at the game, and the win made it even sweeter. I hope to get out to another game sooner rather than later, and hopefully the Bulls can keep up the winning momentum as they continue Life Without Derrick.

Chicago State to the WAC is a Good Thing. Will It Last?

Ever heard of Chicago State University?

For Chicagoans, it may be that school over on 95th & King Drive that a friend or family member goes/went to.

For long-time Summit League fans, this is the school your conference kicked out in 2006. At that time, the athletic department was a compliance nightmare, the president was allegedly spending the school's money for herself, and the graduation rate was abysmal.

Some fans of bigger schools may even remember this school as the one your men's or women's basketball team beat by 40 a couple of November's or December's ago.

For the rest of the country, though, you probably haven't. To most, the name may sound like a generic university from a television sitcom or one of those online colleges that are advertised during the day.

But on Wednesday, December 5th, the Chicago State Cougars may have found themselves inching ever closer to relevance in the college sports scene when they accepted an all-sports invitation into the Western Athletic Conference.

For Chicago State University, this is a big moment in the school's athletic history. It is a huge step in the school's quest to rise from its mid-2000s depths. The charge is lead by new AD Dan Schumacher, who arrived at Chicago State in July after six years at Lewis University in nearby Romeoville. According to a Sun Times profile from around the time of his hiring, the first thing he did at CSU was buy the school a ticket machine. From there, his department has moved forward with the addition of men's and women's soccer teams, a small TV deal with Lakeshore Public TV, the construction of a new baseball and soccer stadium, and, of course, a deal to be added to the Western Athletic Conference.

Inclusion in the WAC will give Cougar athletes a chance to get into an NCAA Tournament, something they haven't had for seven seasons. The idea of simply having a shot at the Tournament should do wonders for recruiting.

It also makes the five year-old, 7,000-seat Jones Convocation Center seem less like wasteful spending.

For the WAC, this move keeps the lights on for now. The conference has come a long way from when they started with six schools in 1962. Things went south in 1996 when the 10-team conference added 6 teams. Half of the conference found the arrangement untenable and left the WAC to start their own conference (the Mountain West) in 1999. Since then, it's been a carousel of schools, most coming and eventually leaving for either the Mountain West or Conference USA. Even four of the five schools they added for the 2012-13 season to cover the losses of other schools are bolting for new conferences. Most of the defections were from schools that have football teams, so the WAC will no longer be sponsoring that sport with only two football schools slated to be left by 2013-14.

So what is a once-proud and stable conference on the verge of collapse to do? Well, you select schools the same way George Clooney and Brad Pitt assembled heist team members in the Ocean's movie series. The WAC has something to offer (an automatic qualifier spot in the Tournament), the schools have something to offer (the desire to be members, thus keeping the conference alive), and both have the same goal in mind: competitive athletics and relevance.

What outsiders see as a conference of misfit toys may have more potential than most think. For 2014-15, the season after current member Idaho leaves for the Big Sky Conference, the WAC alignment will consist of holdovers New Mexico State and Seattle as well as the new additions of Utah Valley, Grand Canyon, Cal State Bakersfield, Texas-Pan American, and Chicago State. That's a strong basketball school in New Mexico State, access to the Seattle, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, and Chicago markets, and possible pipelines into Los Angeles, Houston, and San Antonio. If these schools can stay together and develop their athletic programs, this conference could become a viable mid-major conference.

But even though the WAC rebuilt their house, that house is still made of cards. NMSU is still looking to defect from the WAC, as they are looking for an FBS home for their godawful football team. Seattle - a private, West Coast school that doesn't have a football team - has been looking to get into the West Coast Conference - a conference full of private, West Coast schools that (with the exception of Brigham Young) don't have football teams - ever since they returned to Division I in 2009 after a 29-year absence. Then there's the matter of who else the WAC will add. Where will the next school come from? Division I? Division II? Thin air? The WAC carousel continues to spin.

For now, though, Chicago State's inclusion in the Western Athletic Conference, a conference with a long pedigree of successful schools that will now be including other up-and-coming athletic programs, is a historic and exciting moment for the Cougars. It will be interesting to see what happens next as Chicago State looks to become a major player in mid-major athletics.