USC fails to close another game in a double-overtime loss to Colorado

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 been able to close since they fumbled away a game they should’ve won against Long Beach State in early December. They couldn’t close after holding a late lead against Washington State in early January. Couldn’t close after storming back at Cal earlier this February. And they let their best performance of the season slip away against Colorado on Saturday night, 30 minutes of tremendous basketball washed away under an avalanche of KJ Simpson threes and offensive stagnation, a fourth-quarter stretch and overtime push and double-overtime fight all rendered null in a debilitating 92-89 double-overtime loss.

“We’re right there, these close games,” junior Kobe Johnson said postgame. “We got to be able to do the little stuff, the little details.”

It’s not quite that simple, though, because they’re losing the little stuff in a major way. USC (10-16, 4-11 Pac-12) was slaughtered on the glass 47-22 on Saturday, continuing a horrific trend of bigs being unable to compete on the glass. When center Joshua Morgan was called for a dubious fifth foul on a block in the first overtime, the Trojans lost any semblance of inside presence.

And by the final play, they’d lost their offensive creativity, too. Enfield appeared to draw up an action for Ellis to come off a double-pindown, but Kijani Wright and DJ Rodman seemed confused in screening, and USC helplessly scurried the ball around the perimeter until Ellis let off a 35-plus-foot heave that had absolutely zero chance of dropping.

“I made a lot of game-tying shots, made a lot of game winners, missed a lot,” Ellis said postgame. “It’s what comes with it. It’s basketball.”

The captain drooped for several seconds after the buzzer, his head bowed as Colorado teammates clapped each other on the back, marooned in frustration out around midcourt after another disappointment.

It washed away the overwhelming good vibrations generated in a tremendous start to the night. We gotta have more pride, Ellis has repeated with thinly-veiled disgust, multiple times across a 1-8 stretch in which USC too often looked like a team that had no fight left to give. And they played perhaps their best first half of the season Saturday, taking a 39-33 lead at the break in a sort of catharsis at Galen. Morgan frustrated the bigger and stronger Lampkin, forcing him out of bounds on one possession, the bench the most energetic it’d been in months. Ellis hit three-first half triples, capping it off with one spin-move into lefty-finish as the shot clock expired that had USC’s entire bench raising their left hand in awe.

He was the leader of this group, Ellis reflected on Tuesday. In some way, USC’s effort against Stanford was a reflection of his own.

“I feel like that part’s on me, on Kobe,” Ellis said then. “We have the C’s on our jerseys for a reason.”

He dropped 30 points on 10-of-19 shooting in a heroic effort Saturday. But USC’s lead was generated against Colorado, largely, by dynamic ball movement. As Simpson began to heat up and the Buffs (17-9, 8-7 in Pac-12) continued to slaughter USC on the glass, Enfield’s offense too often relied on Ellis or Collier — who was brilliant himself, with 25 points and nine assists — to don a cape and create miracles from nothing. A fast-break pull-up triple by Simpson cut USC’s lead to one with two minutes to go; after a late steal by Collier with USC still up one, he made just one free throw after being fouled, and a Colorado dunk sent a nerve-wracking game improbably into overtime.

“I mean, it’s no secret — normally, when we lose our lead, normally we don’t get it back,” Morgan said Thursday, after the loss to Utah.

His words proved prophetic, USC’s last lead coming off a Morgan second-chance layup a minute into overtime. A three-pointer by the Buffs’ Tristan De Silva seemed the dagger, bringing Colorado’s lead to 83-79 with a minute left — but Collier drove for a tough layup and Johnson nabbed a beautiful strip at the end of double overtime, Collier roaring in ecstasy after another buzzer sounded.

Colorado, though, drained a parade of free throws in the final overtime, and USC couldn’t find a final bucket to keep pace.

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USC fails to close another game in a double-overtime loss to Colorado – Daily News

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