The No. 24 USC men\u2019s basketball team is about to embark on the most difficult portion of its schedule.<\/p>\n
The weeklong road trip will begin with No. 2 Michigan (12-0 overall, 2-0 Big Ten) on Friday, move on to No. 9 Michigan State (12-1, 2-0) on Monday and finally wrap up with Minnesota (8-5, 1-1) on Jan. 9.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know if anybody\u2019s prepared in the country for that trip,\u201d head coach Eric Musselman told reporters in mid-December.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to be on the road longer than a lot of NBA teams when they go on their East Coast trip. And that\u2019s coming right out of the break.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Trojans (12-1, 1-1) will have to quickly shake off any rust accumulated over the winter break to be ready for a Michigan team that has the No. 3 scoring offense in men\u2019s college basketball.<\/p>\n
The Wolverines are putting up 96.8 points a game and are shooting 53.59% from the field, which is second-best in the country. They became the first Big Ten team in conference history to record six wins of 40 or more points in a season when they beat McNeese State 112-71 on Monday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you defend the way we defend, you stay with it,\u201d head coach Dusty May told reporters after the win, \u201cand you\u2019re going to turn some of those stops into baskets when you\u2019re as lethal and have the passing ability that we have.\u201d<\/p>\n
Michigan has picked up conference wins over Rutgers and Maryland and has beaten two ranked teams in Auburn and Gonzaga in the Players Era Championship.<\/p>\n
Friday night will be a sold-out game at Crisler Center and will mark Terrace Williams II\u2019s return to Ann Arbor. The 6-foot-7 graduate guard played at Michigan for four seasons and made Sweet 16 runs with Michigan in 2021 and 2022.<\/p>\n
Five Wolverines are averaging double digits in scoring and 6-foot-9 forward Yale Lendeborg leads all players with an average of 15.7 points per game in addition to 7.2 rebounds.<\/p>\n
Aday Mara, a 7-foot-3 center and UCLA transfer, is averaging a team-best 8.2 rebounds per game. He could match up well with USC\u2019s 7-foot-6 Gabe Dynes in the post.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know what the lineup will be for us in Ann Arbor, but at least now we have film to try to help our team,\u201d Musselman said after closing out the non-conference season against UC Santa Cruz.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe thought process was we go to Michigan \u2014 Michigan starts a huge lineup. Michigan does it for about four minutes. And so the question is, do we do that with four minutes?\u201d<\/p>\n
After USC faces Michigan, they\u2019ll take on a Michigan State team that\u2019s on a four-game winnning streak and has only one loss this season to No. 6 Duke.<\/p>\n
The Spartans\u2019 scoring offense ranks 12th out of 18 Big Ten teams with 80.8 points per game, but they have a major all-around weapon in 6-foot-9 senior forward Jaxon Kohler. He\u2019s averaging a double-double of 13.7 points and 10.3 rebounds a game while shooting 53.2% from the field.<\/p>\n
The Trojans could have an advantage if they jump on the Spartans early. Michigan State gave up 53 points in the first half in their most recent game against Cornell but recovered to win 114-97.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s something about having a team down and being able to put foot on their throat, as they say, and this team doesn\u2019t have that yet,\u201d said head coach Tom Izzo, who is in his 31st season with the program. \u201cWe\u2019re going to have to work on that.\u201d<\/p>\n
No. 24 USC (12-1 overall, 1-1 Big Ten) at No. 2 Michigan (12-0, 2-0)<\/p>\n
When: Friday, 4 p.m.<\/p>\n
Where: Crisler Center, Ann Arbor, Michigan<\/p>\n
TV\/Radio: Peacock\/USCTrojans.com\/Listen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The No. 24 USC men\u2019s basketball team is about to embark on the most difficult portion of its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":510588,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,217,325,231,772,1544,66,34593],"class_list":{"0":"post-510587","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-college-basketball","10":"tag-college-sports","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-ncaa-basketball","13":"tag-ncaab","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-usc-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115822162301828083","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/510588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}