Luca Evans (OC Register)  — LAS VEGAS — Boogie Ellis could barely speak a half hour after it was over, each word an ordeal in grief.

“Obviously,” he mumbled, his voice something below a whisper, “this is not how I wanted this to end.”

He sat in front of his locker after Thursday’s loss to Arizona (losers to Oregon for the Pac-12 tourney title), side-by-side with silent teammates, no words. No headphones. When he was approached quietly for a quick interview with the Southern California News Group, he frowned. Frustrated. Who would want to talk, after all, fresh with all the emotion of a college basketball career suddenly and unceremoniously finished?

Junior Kobe Johnson sat to his right, and freshman Isaiah Collier to his left, and Bronny James in the corner, unmoving. They carried a resignation on their shoulders; history will remember this USC season as a team that never quite rounded into what it could have been. What it should have. When the Trojans (15-18 overall, 8-12 Pac-12) finally hit their stride later in the season, carrying four straight wins through the first round of the Pac-12 Tournament, they ran into a motivated Arizona program in Las Vegas and were shut down Thursday in a 70-49 loss, destroying their last hope at an NCAA Tournament bid. And the path forward is unclear, entering the Big Ten.

No more Ellis, eligibility exhausted. No more Joshua Morgan, a four-year USC center. No more Johnson, potentially, if he chooses to head for the NBA Draft. No more Collier, and no more James, if the freshmen decide to step to the next level. USC might have a virtual clean slate under head coach Andy Enfield heading into a new conference, and he has something to prove, earning a deserved reputation as an ace recruiter but now three years removed from an Elite Eight NCAA Tournament run and two years removed from a six-year contract extension.

“I’m not disappointed at all,” Enfield said after Thursday’s loss, when asked if he felt it was a disappointing season for USC.

Briefly, he rattled off a list of recent-year achievements: their three-year NCAA Tournament streak, previously consistent excellence in the Pac-12, USC’s record over the last four seasons.

“So, we’re used to winning,” Enfield continued.

After a brief second in the locker room on Thursday, Ellis nodded his head ever-so-slightly and acquiesced to a couple of questions, tilting his head back. He is USC’s captain, after all, even in his last defeat. And he speaks, one final time, even through choked vocal cords and a hand over his eyes as the tears come.

“I’m glad I got to play with these guys,” he said.

Optimism bloomed in September, fresh off a two-game preseason exhibition Europe tour in the summer. Ellis was returning. Johnson was ready to make a leap as a secondary scorer. Collier and James made for an impressive freshman class.

But James suffered a cardiac arrest in the summer, his recovery the program’s most prominent story. Ellis was frequently hobbled. Collier broke his hand in January, just as he was starting to learn the college game, after being too prone to turnovers and defensive lapses in his first two months. USC lost six straight games through Feb. 1, humiliated two weeks later in a 31-point loss at Stanford’s Maples Pavilion, the point at which transfer forward DJ Rodman said it sunk in that they had no shot at an at-large March bid.

Enfield, as calls for his job circled among unhappy fans on social media, defended the program’s slump for two straight months during virtually every media availability possible.

“Of course, the first week of January we had our two leading scorers get out at the same time, with Boogie with his hamstring and Isaiah with his broken hand, and Josh (Morgan) got sick and lost 15 pounds, we lost three starters all at once,” Enfield said Thursday – change a few words around, and it could have been mistaken for a variety of sentences he’d said across the past two months.

Cohesion issues, though, lingered deeper than the unmistakable reality of an injury-plagued roster that made it difficult to simply practice. Ellis, as the losses piled up and time ticked down on his college basketball career, began offering hardly-veiled remarks about USC’s culture, repeatedly implying that the program needed to have more pride.

In a loss to Oregon on Feb. 1, USC started so slow defensively that assistant coach Chris Capko was seen barking animatedly at players during multiple huddles. After the loss, commenting on a variety of ever-changing rotations, Enfield said that would continue “until we get some consistency and some toughness.”

Ellis, after a Jan. 27 loss to UCLA: “We got a lot of young guys now. We got to want it more.”

Ellis, after the Feb. 10 loss to Stanford: “USC’s never been like this. This is not what we’re about.”

Ellis, a few days later after practice: “I don’t care, win, lose or draw, we just gotta compete. And I feel like, we all haven’t been competing.”

For two years, Enfield has been able to build USC in part around Ellis, Johnson, and center Morgan. But Ellis and Morgan have no eligibility left, and Johnson’s status is uncertain, telling the Southern California News Group in October he would “hopefully be outta here next year.”

The program’s immediate future will hinge on Enfield’s ability to build a totally new core, which could invite a more aggressive use of the transfer portal than USC has shown in years past.

“We anticipate, with the amount of veterans we’re losing, to take a serious look at numerous players in the portal,” Enfield told SCNG on Thursday, while sitting in the locker room.

Collier’s draft stock dropped after his introduction to college basketball exposed a number of rough edges in his game – ball control, defense, shooting stroke – and he told SCNG in February that he still hadn’t decided on entering the draft. But he rounded into form as a playmaker down the stretch, averaging 17.6 points and 4.5 assists over his last 11 games.

James, theoretically, would be done well by another year to grow in the college game, a strong defender and playmaker who shot just 36.6% from the floor and 26.7% from 3-point range after a belated start to his season recovering from heart surgery. But signs point to him exploring options at the next level, with Klutch Sports’ Rich Paul telling ESPN in early March that he’d value getting James on the “right team in the right developmental situation” over James being selected in the NBA Draft lottery.

And if neither player returns, the program’s future dangles in the balance – hamstrung by a veteran core with no time left and a recruiting class who could cut their losses.

ocregister.com

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