The basketball seasons for Southern California and Washington, who will meet in the second round of the Big Ten tournament on Wednesday in Chicago, have been remarkably similar.
The 12th-seeded Huskies (15-16 overall) and the No. 13-seeded Trojans (18-13), who both entered the campaign with NCAA Tournament aspirations, need long runs — if not a Big Ten title — to make it to the Big Dance.
Both teams have been plagued by injuries and lost star players — Washington’s Desmond Claude and USC’s Chad Baker-Mazara — to somewhat mysterious circumstances that haven’t been fully explained.
“We feel this is an NCAA Tournament team if we were healthy,” said USC coach Eric Musselman, whose squad enters the postseason on a seven-game losing streak. “We have no doubt that it was – or would be.”
The Huskies swept the season series with USC.
Washington rallied from an 18-point deficit to win 84-76 on Dec. 6 in Los Angeles, snapping an 11-game skid in the series. Freshman Hannes Steinbach had 24 points and 16 rebounds for the Huskies, and Claude and Wesley Yates III, who both transferred from USC after last season, added 22 and 16 points, respectively.
On March 4 in Seattle, Zoom Diallo scored a career-high 26 points and Steinbach added 22 points and a season-best 24 boards as the Huskies pulled away late for a 91-72 victory. The rebounds were the fourth-most in program history.
As for beating USC for a third time?
“It’s hard to do, especially against a good team,” Washington coach Danny Sprinkle said. “Our guys, they have great respect for USC and their players. They know what they’re capable of. It’s been one of those games where it’s been a tale of both halves in the first meeting and the second meeting.
“The one thing, we’ve just played better in the second half and time ran out (on the Trojans),” he continued. “The first half? They kicked our butts both first halves. There’s a lot of things we have to do much better if we want to continue to be successful on Wednesday against them.”
