First off, this isn’t Kansas anymore.
The Jayhawks’ real Final Four-caliber team was last year, when nobody got to play. It has been investigated almost as extensively as California unemployment fraud, and COVID-19 paid a return visit to its roster in recent weeks.
The Jayhawks were beaten by the time USC’s Isaiah Mobley hit his fourth 3-pointer in the first half Monday night, or maybe his third, and their real penalty was the requirement that they had to stay in uniform for 40 minutes.
They weren’t ready for the Trojans, who won this second-round NCAA Tournament game, 85-51, and allowed both coaches to bring in their walk-ons with 2½ minutes remaining.
The real question is, who is?
Oregon will get the next shot in what will be the unofficial tiebreaker for the Pac-12 regular-season title. The Ducks were 14-4 and the Trojans were 15-5, but USC spanked Oregon at the Galen Center in their only meeting.
“We have a lot of respect for Oregon,” USC coach Andy Enfield said. “We’ve been trying to tell you guys (media) that the Pac-12 is really good. Honestly, I wish we were playing a team from a different conference. It’s going to be a great basketball game.”
Parenthetically, it’s a Final 16 game, and the winner will put the Pac-12 into the Final Eight for the first time since 2017, when the Ducks advanced to the Final Four.
No national contender is as ignored in its hometown as the Trojans are, and there’s nothing cinematic about them, but at some point, attention must be paid.
USC is difficult under any circumstances, formidable when Tahj Eaddy and Drew Peterson are ringing the bell from outside, and terrifying when Isaiah Mobley and Isaiah White start playing “around the world.”
The elder member of USC’s Big Brother program hit four of four 3-pointers in the first half, and he had only taken 30 for the season. White was a 29.8 percent long bomber, and early in this second half, he hit three triples in the space of six possessions.
By then the Jayhawks were in a bottomless Phog. They missed eight of their first nine shots, shot 28.5 percent in the first half and missed their final six shots of the first half in what was a drought that lasted 4:10.
If they had a chance against USC’s constricting defense, it was through the hands and feet of David McCormack, their strongman inside. Perhaps he could get Evan Mobley into foul trouble, or draw enough bodies to open lanes for someone else.
It was all theory because Kansas didn’t even try, at least not after McCormack missed on the first possession. Kansas didn’t score until its ninth trip downcourt, and McCormack’s first bucket didn’t come for 8:20.
“McCormack’s probably the best center that we’ve played,” Enfield said. “We just did a good job with team defense tonight. I was impressed because we held Kansas to 29 percent from the field, and we did the same thing to Drake (in the first round). But Kansas is such a good defensive team, and we scored over 80 points on them.”
Kansas lost to Gonzaga early and had regular scrums against what was supposed to be a muscular Big 12. You figured the Jayhawks had seen everything. But their eyes got very big on Monday.
Not everybody can cover the court from sideline to sideline and discourage the ball reversal that fuels most offenses. Not everybody can shrink the lane as the Big Brothers do, or play with such a businesslike air. Not everybody can morph from man-to-man into zone and do it without compromise.
Not everybody has this type of experience, with all the transfers, and don’t get hung up on the schools where they played before. The one thing we should learn from the annual shipwreck of the NCAA Tournament’s first weekend is that the Woffords and the Santa Claras and the Rices play in legitimate basketball leagues, too.
USC not only gave Kansas its worst NCAA Tournament loss ever, by far, but it posted the best tournament field goal percentage (57.1) against the Jayhawks. Accompany that with a 43-27 thrashing on the backboards, and this might have been more of a boat-race than a USC-Kansas football game.
“We’ve been in a hotel for 13 straight days,” Enfield said. “We got outside for about 10 minutes and saw the sunshine. We’re looking forward to our 30-second walk to the bus. As far as what we do for fun, we’ve been really enjoying watching the Pac-12 win all these tournament games.”
Just another way in which California isn’t in touch with the rest of America. The three other time zones might have to deal with it.
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