Joshua Morgan’s monster clutch block seals USC’s gritty win over Utah
Morgan rejects Deivon Smith’s attempt at a game-tying layup in the final seconds as the Trojans win for just the second time in their last 10 games, 68-64
Joshua Morgan shoots in front of Utah center Lawson Lovering during the first half Thursday at Galen Center. (Mark J. Terrill / AP)Joshua Morgan gave Enfield a much better lasting image.
Morgan, the Pac-12’s leading shot blocker, swatted Deivon Smith’s layup with 5.8 seconds remaining, sealing USC’s 68-64 victory over the Utes at Galen Center on Thursday. DJ Rodman secured the defensive rebound, raced down the court for a buzzer-beating layup and roared toward the rafters, giving the slumping Trojans a momentary lift.
“This win was one of those wins where your entire team stuck together and grinded it out,” said Morgan, who had seven points and four blocks. “Putting anything I did aside, I’m just ecstatic that everyone on the team bought in, everyone on the team came ready to play, everyone wanted to play defense, everyone locked into the scout and we came out with a great win.”
USC was hoping to erase the embarrassment of a 31-point loss at Stanford on Saturday. It was the largest margin of defeat for the program since 2020.
Having dropped eight of their last nine before Thursday’s thrilling win, the Trojans (10-15, 4-10 Pac-12) know the results of the next month are largely inconsequential. They recognize their only hope to make the NCAA tournament is to win the Pac-12 tournament. But before trying to run the table in Las Vegas, the Trojans are still playing for an important prize.
Their pride.
“We didn’t show no fight in that [Stanford] game,” said freshman Isaiah Collier, who finished with 15 points, six assists and three steals. “But we also learned a lot from that game.”
Bronny James, left, and forward Joshua Morgan, right, celebrate after forward DJ Rodman scored the final basket in a 68-64 win over Utah. (Mark J. Terrill / AP)
USC had its best three practices in at least a month this week. The coaching staff told the players immediately after the loss at Stanford that the next practice on Monday was going to be hard. No one shied away from the warning shot.
“If you can’t go hard, then go home,” Enfield said of his message. “We have no time for softness. We compete. And give our guys credit.”
USC showed its mettle after Utah’s Cole Bajema hit a three-pointer that put the Utes (15-10, 7-7 Pac-12) ahead by two with 13:05 remaining. The Trojans looked ready to fold. They had let a 13-point lead shrink to five by halftime. They didn’t give any effort on the go-ahead transition basket. Enfield called a timeout.
“It’s no secret, normally when we lose our lead, normally we don’t get it back,” Morgan said. “As opposed to maybe even a week ago, I’d say our team really stuck together. … They had their run and as opposed to just laying down, we fought back.”
The Trojans answered with nine consecutive points. Collier provided the spark on offense. Fellow freshman Bronny James locked down on defense. They teamed for a high-flying dunk as James collected a loose ball off a steal from Ellis and threw an outlet pass to the sprinting Collier, who elevated for a two-handed slam that forced Utah to call a timeout.
But when James went to the bench with 3:46 remaining, the Trojans’ eight-point lead nearly evaporated as Utah went on a 6-0 run. Holding onto a two-point lead with 33 seconds remaining and needing a defensive stop, Enfield subbed James back in.
James was the closest USC defender when Gabe Madsen turned the ball over out of bounds with 17.5 seconds left.
“In the second half,” Enfield said of James, “he was terrific. He had been struggling with his shooting. And we want him to shoot open shots, but as you saw tonight, he can affect winning in a variety of ways.”
James finished with seven points, three rebounds and three assists.
latimes.com
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Big game tonight for the Trojan women BB with #11 Colorado at home, then #18 Utah on Sunday. SC lost to both last month on the road. Looking for a great TEAM effort and not the Juju show for a couple wins!
LA Chargers reach deal to hire superior USC assistant Kiel McDonald as RBs coach Yet another strong college coach splits for the NFL, the big trend nowadays Kaiden Smith (on3.com) — New Los Angeles Chargers HC Jim Harbaugh continues filling out his staff as he enters his first season. NFL insider Adam Schefter reported early Thursday morning that LA is finalizing a deal to make USC asst Kiel McDonald the team’s next running backs coach. McDonald has spent the past two seasons as USC RBs coach and five seasons prior to that in the same role for the Utah Utes. Before coming to Utah, the 40-year-old McDonald… Read more »
So does LR go out to find a replacement or give one of his existing offensive coaches an extra responsibility? Who in the Big Ten is a great RB coach?
A Group of 5 coach would jump at it.
Sounds like the Baylor RB coach from SMU is in the lead.
Kiel McDonald, USC running backs coach to go to the Chargers. I really dislike Harbaugh.
Most interesting coaches (12) in ’25 recruiting cycle Antonio Morales (The Athletic) Lincoln Riley, USC — From a recruiting standpoint, expectations were sky-high for Riley when he took the USC job. His first full class was good (No. 8 nationally). His 2024 class was fine (No. 17). Those classes are helping the Trojans upgrade their talent, but the gap between their roster and the nation’s elite programs still seems quite wide. Riley was supposed to bring in top-five classes to eliminate that deficit, but he hasn’t achieved that yet, for several reasons. USC isn’t having the same sort of success recruiting… Read more »
The CFP committee met to get the format for the new 12 team playoff. Then the B1G and SEC decide they want 4 automatic playoff spots for each conference. That would leave 4 spots left open for the rest of college football. Fortunately it didn’t pass and the committee is going with the 5/7 format which is much more fair. It sounds like they have become partners and may be cooking something up for a power move in years to come. Who knows.
I thought is would be interesting to compare our first opponent LSU and the rebuilding SC Trojans. Last year, LSU went 10-3 and its QB won the Heisman. The year prior SC had gone 11-3 and its QB won the Heisman. In 2023, SC went 8-5 but played a tougher schedule. The two win difference could be attributed in part to the typical SEC scheduling. LSU won its bowl game against a quality Wisconsin team 35-31 with its Heisman QB sitting out (the replacement QB looked very good). SC won its Bowl again a quality Louisville team with its Heisman… Read more »
Nice write up, TRJJ, thanks.
The dying last gasps of the Pac-12, Conference of Champions
Odds skyrocket for Bears to draft Caleb Williams amid Justin Fields’ suspicious IG activity Tori Rubinstein (Sports Chicago) — Odds that Justin Fields will be under center for the Bears next season have taken another dip. Social media went into a frenzy this week when fans noticed that Fields does not follow the official Chicago Bears Instagram account. On top of that, the quarterback recently followed three Atlanta Falcons players, Kyle Pitts, Drake London and Bijan Robinson. As a result, the odds that Fields will take his first snap of the 2024-25 season for Atlanta spiked from +600 to +150 on DraftKings SportsBook Tuesday. The… Read more »
Joel Klatt discusses Caleb Williams’ “generational” NFL talent edge Sam Gillenwater (on3.com) — Caleb Williams has long been viewed as the best prospect in the 2024 NFL Draft. That take remained consistent for Joel Klatt (yesterday) with his reveal of the Trojan quarterback at the top of his rankings at the position. Klatt ranked his top-five quarterbacks, including Williams at No. 1, in an episode of his show on Monday. After placing Williams atop the list, he then praised the former USC star and Heisman Trophy winner as a prospect that you don’t see every day. “I have said before and you’re going continue to hear this. Like, ‘Well, he does a lot of… Read more »
Allen there is a video of Caleb highlights. Not sure if you have seen it but I thought it would be a fun watch for anyone interested. It truly shows the magic Caleb can perform.
https://youtu.be/cn9g8onevzM
Just watched the interviews given by Entz and Henderson. Wow! They are really impressive. Either one blows away anyone on the prior D staff. To be honest, Entz is at this time probably a better HC than LR was in 2022 and 2023. LR is a genius OC and runs on of the best Os in the nation, but, until now, simply ignored the D. Entz clearly understands D really well – he picked up the problems with Grinch approach quickly and explained them clearly – the kids were confused. They were thinking too much. He could tell it from… Read more »
LR also totally flopped as a QB coach last season.
Caleb unanimously regressed in 2023 per both the national and local media, didn’t even get invited to New York, yet will be drafted #1 by the NFL ahead of some other very good QBs because of his amazing, some would call “generational”, natural gifts on the ground and in the air — not because LR let him run riot in 2023 like he was operating some Chinese Fire Drill half the time.
Totally agree. Caleb was better in 2022 than 2023, but he was still very good. He had some awful games such as at ND. Why? For me, it does it matter. I note the team seemed to play a lot better without Caleb and Grinch. Was it Grinch? Was it Caleb? Was it LR? Was is KK? Was it all of them? My point is LR and Cohen moved decisively to fix it and I really like what I have seen so far. I do not know how to evaluate the impact of having a really awful D (and LR… Read more »
My point is that LR stunk in 2023 as USC’s head coach. It’s all on LR. LR was responsible for USC’s horrible D, Caleb’s out-of-control subpar year, USC’s inefficient running game, and USC’s brutally disappointing team. Last time I spoke with another Trojan about USC’s offense, he said, “Oh, you mean the Caleb Williams offense, the one where Caleb gets the ball and runs around until he figures out what to do? Is that the only play Lincoln Riley knows how to call?” I couldn’t have said it better. Thankfully, LR was finally forced to fix his woefully substandard approach… Read more »
Totally agree. LR was a major failure in 2023. First failure of his career. He lost control of the team and its narrative AND did not how to fix it. In fact, his way of fixing it only made it worse. He caused the entire mess and then allowed it to spin out of control and did not regain control UNTIL the Bowl prep when both Grinch and Caleb were gone. The worst showing by a USC team against UCLA I can ever recall lays entirely on him. It happened to be at home to compound the embarrassment. At least… Read more »
As has already been posted everywhere ad nauseam, especially as it became apparent LR was clueless in 2023, LR somehow managed to totally waste the final year of a generational USC Heisman winner, and for what? Nobody knows. Pure Grinch love? No. LR’s problems ran much deeper it turns out. Eventually, LR quite literally and unfortunately started to sound like Clay Helton in post-game pressers, when he tried to “gaslight” USC fans with his “untrained eyes” baloney after he unsuccessfully and stupidly tried to kick an excellent young local beat reporter off campus. It didn’t take long for the media… Read more »
Maybe the possibility of losing control of your team as a HC becomes a factor when you go too much into Portal/transfer recruiting as LR did these past two years. Now he’s singing a different song about HS recruiting. Would his program be in better shape today if he had gone more into HS recruiting at the start and take whatever lumps that brought? Wasn’t the whole idea to prepare for the Big Ten?
Jamaica, I am uncertain if that is the lesson. I agree LR lost control of the team. The UCLA game is clear evidence of that. But, he regained control between the UCLA game and the Holiday Bowl (which candidly was IMO the best game SC played all year). What we do know is by the prep for the Holiday Bowl, both Grinch and Caleb were gone. I think having sold the team that it was playing for the NC, once that was lost via Grinch’s putrid D, LR had to move quickly to change the narrative. After the ND game… Read more »
It sure gives us hope with this new staff. Something we didn’t have much of going into last season with Grinch at the wheel.
The Women of Troy move up to AP’s No. 7 spot after their sixth straight win in conference play and second road trip sweep of the season
1. South Carolina
2. Ohio State
3. Stanford
4. Iowa
5. Texas
6. North Carolina State
7. USC
8. Virginia Tech
9. Oregon State
10. Kansas State
11. Colorado
12. UCLA
13. LSU
14. Indiana
15. UConn
16. Gonzaga
17. Syracuse
18. Utah
19. Notre Dame
20. Louisville
21. Creighton
22. West Virginia
23. Oklahoma
24. Baylor
25. Princeton
247sports.com
Pay back Friday against #11 Colorado. Moving up from 3 seed to 2 seed. They are going to need more team play like yesterday to beat Colorado and go far in the Pac12 tourny and March Madness.
I have been following USC BB since the Bob Boyd era. This is by far the most disappointing season ever. Absolute pathetic effort by the coaching staff. No excuse to blow a huge lead with 9 minutes left.
Enfield and co. have worn out their welcome. Defitenly time to move on, but the huge buyout will probably get him 1 more year.
You think fucla football struggles next year in the BIG? I doubt USC men’s basketball wins a game in conference next season.
PN4C, Jen Cohen has a first alarm fire in the Men’s BB program. Think about, she arrives at SC and walked right into a first alarm fire in the Men’s Football program. She and LR did a great job of solving that one. The 2024 Men’s team will not resemble the 2022 and 2003 teams. I think the 2024 team will be significantly better than the 2023 team, but we may not see the results of the improvements until 2025. The Men’s BB program is a different type of problem, because LR is a much better coach than Enfield. LR… Read more »
USC can’t handle the “little details” again and fails to close another game in a double-OT 92-89 loss to Colorado After taking a 16-point lead in the second half, USC slumped again, their offense going stagnant and crushed on the glass (47-22) as Colorado pulled out a 2OT comeback Luca Evans (OC Register) — LOS ANGELES — They were different until they weren’t, putting on lipstick for much of Saturday night against Colorado until crunch time beckoned and all pretense of this USC team was washed away, leading to one inexorably damning reality. They can’t close ballgames. They haven’t… Read more »
This year has been an enigma. A lot of talent on the team, but they can’t win close games. SC has been good defensively in the past couple of years, but not this year. USC was picked to finish second in the PAC-12 but sits at second to last. Very sad!
But hey, the women keep rolling. Beat the #11 Beavers 58-50. Looked like more of a team effort rather than the Juju show. OSU was without their star player. Trojans projected as a 3 seed.
The Komissioner kwit today.
Because he has been a Klown….
The Top 10 Lady Trojans and the incredible Ju Ju Watkins (24 points) lead ORE 57-21 at halftime in Eugene.
Beat the Ducks 88-51! Take on the #11 Beavers tomorrow at noon on PACN.
Did anyone else watch the defensive staff interviews yesterday? I thought they all seemed confident and capable, but Matt Entz seems like a guy destined for really big jobs.
LOS ANGELES—USC’s spring football game will take place on Saturday, April 20 at the Coliseum at 12 p.m. PT (broadcast live on Pac-12 Network).
USC’s spring practices begin on March 19, and all practices are closed to the general public.
USC’s Pro Day will be on March 20.
All 2024 season ticket holders will receive complimentary tickets to the spring game.
usctrojans.com
I thought we were done with the P12 network.
We are. It’s the P2 network now. 😀
If it is the P2 conference, shouldn’t it be the Number One Number Two Conference? After all, the only schools left are a waste byproducts anyway….
A lot of sports still playing in the Pac12. It’s not just about football.