The #5 Purdue Boilermakers will hop on the plane and head out to sunny Los Angeles this weekend to take on the LA schools. Despite us still trying to wrap our heads around USC and UCLA being Big Ten teams, Purdue will take on USC this Saturday at 6:00 PM ET in the Galen Center. The Boilermakers (16-1, 6-0) will attempt to continue its perfect start in conference play as well as extend its 8-game winning streak while USC (14-3, 3-3) looks to knock off a ranked team for the first time in 3 tries this season
(previously lost at Michigan and at Michigan State).
USC Performed Nearly Entire Roster Flip In Offseason
Remember the USC the Purdue played twice last season? Well, this year is basically an entirely new team. Only 3 members of this year’s Trojan squad were on the team a season ago and those 3 guys (Terrance Williams II, Brit Burden, and Jonah Goorin) have combined for 51 points accounting for 3.4% of USC’s scoring this season. That leaves 13 guys donning the red and gold for the first time this year and they are led by former Auburn Tiger, Chad Baker-Mazara, and former Utah Ute, Ezra Ausar. Baker-Mazara and Ausar are the only healthy players to average double figures in scoring this season with 19.1 and 16.4 points per game, respectively. Guard, Rodney Rice, a transfer from Maryland, was averaging 20.3 points per game through 6 games until a shoulder injury required surgery and ended his season. Forward Jacob Cofie barely misses averaging double figures as he is putting out 9.8 points per game.
A Fast Start Has Cooled For USC
Starting the season with so many transfers often takes time as the team needs to gel but that didn’t stop USC from getting off to a great start on the season. The Trojans won their first 8 games of the year including winning the Maui Invitational against Arizona State. USC has won all 11 of their non-conference games but Big Ten play began, it has been a slog. Following a road victory against Oregon, USC dropped 3 straight conference contests against Washington at home and at each of the Michigan schools. The Trojans have rebounded with an overtime victory at Minnesota before most recently beating Maryland this week in Los Angeles.
For USC, conference play has been a rougher stretch, in part because it will be the only games this season where they will play ranked teams (they played none in non-conference) but also because the style of play has ground down. In 11 non-conference games, USC averaged 91.3 points per game and shot 50.5% from the floor and 36.5% from 3. Those numbers have fallen off to 72.2 / 41.9% / 29.2% in 6 Big Ten games.
What Does USC Excel At?
There are two things that this USC team really excels at: getting to the free throw line and blocking shots. The Trojans draw 22.4 personal fouls per game, which is second best in the nation and that translates to 28.6 free throw attempts per contest. Now, USC only makes those free throws at a 73.3% clip, good for 134th in the country, but getting to the line is not the problem. Conversely, Purdue is the 11th best team in the nation at limiting fouls with 14.2 per game, so it will be interesting to see how this one shakes out.
On the flip side of the ball, USC is blocking opponents just under 6 times per game, good for 8th in the nation. 6’7 guard, Chad Baker-Mazara and 6’10 forward, Jacob Cofie contribute over half of those blocks at 1.8 and 1.3 per game, respectively. However, this will be a good-on-good matchup as Purdue has their shots blocked the 11th least in college basketball.
The Purdue Seniors Look To Keep The Newest Delaney Dozen Dream Alive
For the Purdue seniors that began at Purdue (Trey Kaufman-Renn, Braden Smith, Fletcher Loyer, and Sam King) this trip to USC represents an opportunity to keep on pace to be the first class to complete the newest Delaney Dozen. The Delaney Dozen, named after former Big Ten Commissioner, Jim Delaney, is a fairly rare accomplishment for a player in which they win at each of the 14 Big Ten arenas in their career. This feat has been accomplished by some dominant classes of players, including a few at Purdue, but since the Big Ten expanded to 18 teams last season, no class has been able to win in all 18 Big Ten arenas, which figures to be an incredibly rare feat. This leads us to the Purdue seniors who will be presented with the opportunity to complete what I shall dub the Delaney Dozen-and-a-half. This class has won at 15 of 18 Big Ten arenas (Purdue has not won at Bryce Jordan but beat Penn State at the Palestra which acted as a PSU home game) and need road victories at USC, UCLA, and Northwestern. Should Purdue pull this off, it will be even more impressive as they would only have one opportunity at each of Oregon, Washington, USC, and UCLA since they only joined the Big Ten last season. Future 4-year players will get the opportunity to win at the west coast schools twice in their careers.
Braden Smith Looks To Keep Pace With The All-Time Assist Record
We all know that Braden Smith is on his way to challenging for the all-time assist record held by Bobby Hurley. Braden currently has 922 career assists so he will need 155 more to break the record. Purdue is currently guaranteed 14 more regular season game and 1 Big Ten Tournament game. Although not technically guaranteed, it’s a very safe bet that Purdue is guaranteed a NCAA Tournament game as well. So that leaves 16 games in the season if Purdue drops both the first game in both tournaments. At that rate, Smith will need to average 9.7 assists per game to break the record. If we assume Purdue plays an extra 3 games (1 in BTT and 2 in NCAAT), Braden then would need to average 8.2 assists and if Purdue goes on a magical run and plays the maximum 40 games this year, Braden would need to average 6.7 per game. This season, he has averaged 9.6 assists per game though in conference play, that number has jumped to 10.2 assists per game. The vast majority of NCAA fans assume Purdue will not play the minimum number of games this season, so it appears that Braden Smith is on pace to stamp his name in another record book. The pace continues Saturday in Los Angeles.
