Former Pac-12 Conference counterparts Washington State and Southern California will meet in a nonconference clash on Sunday in Los Angeles.
USC (9-1), in its second season since leaving the Pac-12 for the Big Ten Conference, meets Washington State (3-7) for the 132nd time in history and first since a league matchup in February 2024.
The Cougars temporarily joined the West Coast Conference following the Pac-12’s pause after the 2023-24 season, making them USC’s second straight WCC opponent. The Trojans responded to a second-half deficit on Tuesday at San Diego with a game-changing 18-2 run e route to a 94-81 win.
Chad Baker-Mazara scored 31 points to improve his team-leading season output to 21.9 points per game. He also went for six rebounds, six assists and three blocked shots, leading USC in a bounce-back from its first loss.
The Trojans squandered an 18-point halftime lead in their last home game, an 84-76 loss to Washington on Dec. 6.
“It’s a struggle without Rodney (Rice), Amarion (Dickerson) and Alijah (Arenas),” USC coach Eric Musselman said, citing three sidelined Trojans. “We’re kind of surviving, but we do have to get a lot better. That was the message after the game, you know, we’ve got to get back to our DNA offensively, our DNA defensively.”
The absence of Rice, who has missed the last four games due to a shoulder injury sustained during Thanksgiving week at the Maui Invitational, looms especially large. Rice was averaging 20.3 points and six assists per game when he went out.
Musselman has made lineup tweaks in response, which included starting Ryan Cornish in Tuesday’s win. He’s the eighth different Trojan to make at least one start through the first 10 games.
Washington State, which also played in the Maui Invitational, comes into Los Angeles on a four-game skid that began with the holiday tournament. The Cougars dropped decisions to Arizona State and Seton Hall before returning to the mainland and falling in matchups at Bradley and against Nevada.
With the 78-64 home loss to Nevada on Dec. 7, Washington State has failed to score more than 64 points in any of its past three contests. The Cougars rank No. 199 nationally in scoring offense at 76.7 points per game — almost 13 points fewer than USC’s 20th-ranked pace of 89.5 points per game — and Washington State is allowing an average of 79.6 points to rank No. 309 in scoring defense.
“We’ve got to just continue to grow, and eventually, we’ll run out of those ways to lose,” Washington State coach David Riley said, citing 20 turnovers committed at Bradley and 14 offensive rebounds surrendered to Nevada. “We’re going to be able to flip this thing.”
