USC Men's Basketball's Time In Historic Assembly Hall Ends With An 82-69 Loss

Wednesday, January 8

Bloomington, Ind.

4:00 p.m.

USC

9-6,1-3Big Ten

Indiana

13-3,4-1Big Ten

Southern California

Indiana

USC Men's Basketball's Time In Historic Assembly Hall Ends With An 82-69 Loss

January 08, 2025 | Men's Basketball

Box Score

The Trojans fell short of a win after being tied at the half against Indiana.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – USC Men's Basketball (9-6, 1-3 Big Ten) made their first trip to the Midwest as Big Ten play continued against the Indiana University Hoosiers. The Trojans played a strong first half against the Hoosiers, but by the end of the game, Indiana was the one to come out on top as USC lost this Big Ten matchup 82-69.

HOW IT HAPPENED
The game was scoreless through the first minute until Chibuzo Agbo made a corner three to kick off the scoring for the Trojans. From there, USC sank a handful of baskets to give them a small lead heading into the first timeout. The Trojans continued to build on this lead while preventing Indiana from scoring for over three minutes, causing the Hoosiers to burn a timeout early while they were up by eight. Once they returned to the court, these two teams exchanged baskets as the Trojans couldn't pull ahead and the Hoosiers couldn't close the gap. That was until the last eight minutes of the first half. Indiana went on an 8-0 run while the Trojans didn't score for more than three minutes as the game was tied up with 5:30 left to go in the first half. After battling with the Hoosiers through those five minutes, the score remained tied as these two teams went to the locker room with the score sitting at 38-38.

Once the second half began, the Trojans were the first to score yet again as Desmond Claude made a layup. Quickly after, the Hoosiers scored three straight baskets, giving themselves an early advantage in this second half. The Trojans had to battle not just the players on the court, but the energy inside Assembly Hall to get themselves out of the scoring drought. As soon as USC started to chip away at the Hoosiers, they recovered almost immediately. This trend continued throughout the rest of the game as USC fell 82-69 to Indiana.

NOTABLES

USC has found its rhythm with its starting lineup as Chibuzo Agbo, Desmond Claude, Josh Cohen, Saint Thomas and Wesley Yates III started their sixth-straight game.
This is the first time this season that the Trojans went into the half tied with their opponent.
Four Trojans scored in the double digits against the Hoosiers – Wesley Yates III (18), Desmond Claude (15), Chibuzo Agbo (11) and Saint Thomas (11)
With 15 points and four assists recorded today, Desmond Claude officially surpassed 950 career points (955 total) and 230 career assists (232 total).
Yates III shot 100 percent from the charity stripe, going six-for-six at the line.
Agbo, who dropped 11 points against Indiana, also contributed a season-best eight rebounds and five assists. Agbo led USC in rebounds on Wednesday evening.
Thomas contributed an additional seven rebounds against the Hoosiers - his eighth game this season with seven or more boards.
Rashaun Agee scored eight points off the bench for the Trojans.

QUOTABLES
Coach Eric Musselman on the development of his team…
"I think we have a lot of players that have transferred up from the mid-majors, so they are going through some stuff, and our leading scorer is a freshman. It's my first year in the job and it's my job to develop a player like Wesley. There are going to be a lot of learning curves when you use a player like Yates for 38 minutes in his fourth Big Ten game."

"We want to win games, obviously, but I think anyone that watches us can say we compete. We go through some offensive dry spells that hurt us. We thought that we had an opportunity to beat Oregon and Michigan. We played pretty well for 25 minutes tonight, whether we ran out of gas or didn't get a whole lot of production from our bench, but I knew in year one that culture would be important."

UP NEXT
The Trojans will stay in the Midwest as they prepare to take on the University of Illinois on Saturday, Jan. 11. Tip-off will be at 9 a.m. PT on Big Ten Network for those who can't make it to Champaign.