Now that we’re all finally ready to deal with USC’s NCAA Tournament chances, it’s time for some people to come out of the woodwork and admit something: you didn’t want Andy Enfield to succeed in Los Angeles.
You didn’t like the flashy style that his teams at Florida Gulf Coast played with. You hated the nickname Dunk City. You hated that he took his boyish smile and beautiful wife to Southern California after what you thought was just one good run of a few games in the NCAA Tournament. You were, in all actuality, a hater.
Nevermind the five seasons he spent under Leonard Hamilton at Florida State, three of those resulting in trips to the Big Dance. Nevermind his stops in the NBA. You wanted him to fail because, for whatever reason, some people get a kick out of watching USC fail. Well, I hope you got your laughs in during his first two seasons, y’all. Because the Trojans are back.
To talk about USC’s NCAA Tournament chances, we have to talk first about why Enfield’s plan for the program is finally coming to fruition.
First, he sought out the best recruiting names on the west coast, like Jason Hart and San Diego State’s star recruiter, Tony Bland. With them, Enfield had instant credibility in every gym across California, and a network of contacts (not to mention a cache of being “cool”) that gave him a shot at an instant turnaround. But it wasn’t an instant turnaround.
Choosing SoCal preps over fifth-year transfers, his staff hit the ground running and promoted immediate playing time for a big-name program as a recruiting pitch. With the likes of J.T. Terrell, Pe’Shawn Howard, and Byron Wesley on their way out, the pitches worked. Four-star prospects started making the call for USC in a way that hadn’t been seen since the days of Demar Derozan. Malik Marquetti, Elijah Stewart, Jordan McLaughlin, and Malik Martin signed on. He grabbed UNLV transfer and former Mater Dei star Katin Reinhardt, who seeked a return to his native LA Basin. Most importantly, though, he developed Julian Jacobs and Nikola Jovanovic, holdovers from the previous staff. As the players say, Enfield played the long game.
Three years later, after back-to-back finishes on the bottom of the Pac-12 standings, Enfield’s Trojans are 14-3 overall and 3-1 in the Pac-12 with an RPI of No. 17 thanks to their win over Arizona, a game that previous squads wouldn’t have sniffed a chance in. The past two seasons, UC had lost to the Wildcats by 20 and 30 points. In fact, if not for an epic collapse against the most confusing team in the country (Washington), the Trojans would be sitting at the top of the Pac-12 table with a likely AP Top 25 ranking in hand.
There is a long way to go before Selection Sunday and USC still has a challenging conference slate to go, one that includes trips to UCLA, Oregon, Arizona, Cal, Utah, and Colorado. But with a non-conference schedule that ranks, at time of publishing, in the RPI top 25 and a resume that already boasts five top 50 RPI wins, the Trojans are firmly in a place of power–something that many didn’t want to see and even more didn’t expect to see this soon.
