USC men’s basketball still missing its home-court advantage

The Trojans play No. 7 Michigan State on Saturday at the Galen Center, where they’ve gone just 1-3 in Big Ten games

Luca Evans (OC Register)  —  LOS ANGELES — In mid-January, Rafi and Christine Mansourian sat in the lower basin of the Galen Center, two among dozens in attendance clutching a popsicle-stick fathead of reserve guard Avand Dorian.

USC’s game against Wisconsin on Jan. 18 was dubbed an “Armenian Heritage Celebration,” a chance to honor Dorian, making waves as a sophomore who’d walked onto head coach Eric Musselman’s first-year program as the first Armenian player in USC men’s basketball history. Dorian was the star of AGBU Manoogian-Demirdijan School, an Armenian college-prep school in Winnetka, and a grassroots effort quickly spread among the Armenian community in Los Angeles to gobble up tickets to USC-Wisconsin.

“This is something that has never happened before in the Armenian community,” Rafi Mansourian said a few minutes before USC-Wisconsin tipped. “So, we’re really cherishing it and supporting it as much as we can.”

At least 500 members of that community, as Mansourian estimated, sat in Galen that Saturday, many wearing merch of Dorian’s No. 14 USC jersey. And at several points throughout the second half, the Armenian faithful rocked Galen in plainly audible calls for Dorian: We-want-A-Vand!

They never got him. It was a proud night, in many ways, and yet USC lost 84-69 to Wisconsin as another home game slipped away. The Trojans played from behind, and couldn’t find a few minutes for Dorian – and still haven’t quite managed to put a consistent 40 minutes of Big Ten play in front of Los Angeles home crowds.

“I mean, you’ve got to win eight out of 10 games at home,” Musselman said after that loss, “or you can’t play in March. Again, that’s factual. Not an opinion.”

Indeed, any first-year hope of a surprise at-large NCAA Tournament berth has dwindled for USC (12-8, 4-5 Big Ten) with a string of conference losses at home. Musselman’s Trojans have played with a mentality to punch other teams first on the road, as big Rashaun Agee put it after USC hosted UCLA on Monday; but they’ve gotten “too relaxed” at home, Agee said, these Trojans now sitting at 1-3 in Big Ten games at Galen after the loss to UCLA.

“We expect the crowd to be there every game, but we’re not producing,” guard Wesley Yates III said after the UCLA loss. “Like, honestly, like, who’s going to want to come watch us if we’re not producing?”

Part of the problem, perhaps, is that USC’s home environments haven’t exactly been overwhelmingly hostile to road opponents, as Musselman has hinted at several times. USC has averaged about 6,698 fans across Big Ten home games at the Galen Center, or about 65% capacity.

The traditional Big Ten opponents the Trojans have played on the road (Indiana, Illinois, Nebraska), meanwhile, have all averaged more than 14,500 fans and 90% capacity in the Big Ten this year, a conference notoriously brutal on road teams without even factoring in a brutal west-to-east travel schedule for USC.

Complicating matters, too, is the fact that Big Ten fans both travel well and are entrenched in Los Angeles, with a large percentage of opposing fans in the Galen Center making themselves audibly apparent in USC’s losses to both Michigan and Wisconsin.

“We had no home-court advantage, I mean – whether, that’s just how it is,” Musselman said the loss to Wisconsin. “It’s been that way. And we gotta continue to work as a program to make it more of a home-court advantage.”

That’ll start Saturday afternoon against No. 7 Michigan State, USC’s biggest non-UCLA matchup of the season and a game that’ll likely serve as the last gasp on any USC tournament hopes, by Musselman’s own determination. An upset would suddenly give the Trojans two ranked wins and three Quad One wins; a loss would drop USC’s home conference record to 1-4.

“I feel like, we just gotta come – when we play at home, we gotta be even more focused,” Yates III said. “Like, 10 times more.”

ocregister.com

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