USC needs to put excuses to rest over why basketball program is a mess

Published Monday, Jan 14, 2013 at 3:48 pm EST
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Once again, basketball at the University of Southern California has failed. This is the region that sent James Harden, Kawhi Leonard, Klay Thompson and Chase Budinger into the basketball world, and the school that has conquered the sports of football, baseball, tennis and water polo. The two never really connected, though. USC basketball remains an oxymoron.

USC’s tradition is what, exactly? That it has no tradition? That’s the quick dismissal, but it’s not entirely accurate. That it’s had to wander outside the boundaries of the NCAA’s rulebook to make it inside the NCAA Tournament? Most recently, that was true.

Kevin O'Neill led the Trojans to just one NCAA Tournament appearance. (AP Photo)

That back in the day when the Trojans were really good they were forced to contend with the UCLA/Wooden machine that had conquered all the world and with the rule that allowed only one team per conference to play for the national title? Yeah, they’ve surfed on that one for a while. If only it were true. During the dozen-year run of the Wooden dynasty, USC finished runner-up four times and only twice won 20 games.

The tradition of USC basketball is, really, of hiring coaches who struggle to engage with their public, whose brand of basketball is more effective than appealing and who too soon wind up on the wrong end of a conversation with the athletic director.

The current AD is Pat Haden, once a great college quarterback, then a successful businessman and part-time sportscaster. Now he is in charge of the athletic department that made him famous and showing no particular aptitude toward improving the sport he does know well.

He didn’t hire Lane Kiffin. That was someone else’s blunder, but Haden has not demonstrated as yet he is predisposed to correct it. He is allowing Kiffin to coach on even after presiding over a plunge from No. 1 in the preseason to unranked minor bowl loser in the end.

Kevin O’Neill, until Monday the Trojans’ basketball coach, was hired by Haden’s predecessor, as well. It was a curious decision at the time. O’Neill is and always has been a terrific defensive coach, but at the time he took over the Trojans he hadn’t had an indisputably successful college season in 15 years. O’Neill demonstrated his ability on the bench with a 19-15 season in 2010-11 that got the Trojans into the NCAA Tournament. Recruiting never flourished, though. Last season’s team was ravaged by injury, but this year there weren’t any such excuses for a 7-10 start.

As often is the case at schools where football is the primary business, so to speak, it is possible O’Neill was handled so it would appear that his superiors aren’t being soft on failure. It’s sort of a corollary to the old Jerry Tarkanian joke, that the NCAA was so mad at Kentucky it would punish Cleveland State that much worse. Under the previous athletic administration, coaches privately complained the breaks available to their peers at other schools were withheld from them. For instance, once a player was injured early in the season and missed a significant amount of time. The compliance folks, we were told, resisted processing paperwork for a medical redshirt because the athlete was healthy enough to play late in the year.

That was then. Now? Based on the Kiffin conundrum, we have every reason to wonder whether Haden will be able to find his way to the right solution for a basketball program that has no reasonable excuse for its perpetual mediocrity. Kicking out O’Neill in midseason is no evidence of such vision. As much trouble as USC has endured, the conference record is 2-2. Why the rush?

What the Trojans eventually will need is a coach who will understand the importance of properly evaluating and attracting the best players in Southern California and along the West Coast. Nine members of the current roster are from outside the state, and six of the top 10 scorers.

In the conference, four of the top 15 scorers are from Los Angeles, and six are from California. But none play for the Trojans.

Many of the best players to emerge from California have been underappreciated while they competed in high school: Russell Westbrook, Darren Collison, Ryan Anderson and Leonard were not elite recruits. It is possible for the right scouts to build a foundation for a quality program on underappreciated players in the region and then interject a difference-making player here and there. There’ve been plenty of those in SoCal, too, whether it was Harden or Budinger, or a current Arizona Wildcat like Grant Jerrett.

USC no longer has the dreadful facilities issues that plagued the program for far too long. The Galen Center is one of the finest places in America to watch a college basketball game, and it contains a vast and functional practice facility and all the training equipment necessary to turn a high school kid into a man of a college basketball player.

On the Trojans’ official website Monday, accompanying the story of his dismissal was a picture of O’Neill addressing his players in the Galen Center locker room. On the wall above them was a printed slogan: PLAY LIKE A TROJAN

That has been the problem for far too long at USC. They’ve been playing like Trojans for decades. If basketball is going to work there, it will be necessary to redefine what a Trojan is.