Entering September, we at Trojans Wire were really excited about the new college sports cycle for 2023 and 2024. We still have USC baseball coming up in February, and the Trojans should be good when they hit the diamond under Andy Stankiewicz. Yet, the big buzz at USC coming into this autumn surrounded both football and basketball.
The football team was definitely expecting to win the Pac-12 and contend for the College Football Playoff. We all saw how that turned out. Lincoln Riley and Alex Grinch presided over a massive failure, a huge disappointment for the community of Trojan fans who had such high hopes in the first few weeks of the season.
Men’s basketball was supposed to be really good — not necessarily special, but certainly with a chance to be special. The Trojans had the No. 1 recruit in the United States for 2023, Isaiah Collier. Boogie Ellis came back for one more season. Vince Iwuchukwu was hopefully going to get healthier. D.J. Rodman was supposed to be a big portal pickup from Washington State, where he gave USC problems as a Cougar. Bronny James, once he joined the team, had a chance to provide a major boost.
Nothing has worked. Nothing has taken off for this program under struggling coach Andy Enfield. The Trojans have five losses before Christmas and are likely to miss the NCAA Tournament. They will need a huge Pac-12 season to get on the bubble and then get into March Madness.
Football: swing and a miss.
Men’s basketball: swing and a miss.
Women’s basketball, however, has been a home run.
To compare the toughness of the USC women’s basketball team to the football team and the men’s basketball team, simply consider how each team has dealt with injuries over the past few months.
USC’s offensive line never seemed to recover from the Gino Quinones injury. The Trojans’ offensive line performance declined after that one injury. This is not to say that injuries shouldn’t matter, but no one went into 2023 thinking that Quinones was a…
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