2011 Southern Cal College Basketball Predictions

Recap

Southern Cal had a mediocre season in 2010-11 having a 19-15 record and also a 4th place finish in the Pac-10.  In the conference tourney the Trojans made it to the semifinals, then proceeded to lose in the play-in game of the NCAA tourney to Virginia Commonwealth.

Southern Cal acquired results by being a fantastic defensive group.  Southern Cal held their foes to less than 41% from the field shooting and to less than 64 points game.

The loss of Nikola Vucevic and Alex Stepheson is going to be tough to replace.  Vucevic averaged more than 17 points per game and brought down 10.3 rebounds per game.  Stepheson was the team’s second best rebounder at 7.2 each game and also contributed 9.8 points.

2011-12 Overview

Kevin O’Neill has been the Southern Cal head coach for a couple of years and has provided the fans teams that play hard and improve as the year goes on.  This year’s group has lots of production to replace, but O’Neill does have Jio Fontan, Maurice Jones, and Garrett Jackson all back.  Along with a strong recruiting class the Trojans brought in transfers Aaron Fuller and Dewayne Dedmon.

Backcourt

USC is going be heavily depending on their guard duo of Fontan and Jones.  Fontan sat out fall semester last season, but returned to lead the team in assists and finished second in points at 10.5 points every contest.

Jones was third on the Trojans in points with 9.9 points per contest, gave out 110 total assists, and established the team record with 69 steals as a freshman.  His achievements helped to bring in a place on the Pac-10 All-Freshman team.

Bryon Wesley is a 6’5″ freshman perimeter player who is expected to contribute around the offensive end right away.  Alexis Moore is another freshman who ought to see time and contributes well on each side sides of the court.  Junior college transfer Greg Allen can be a lock down defender and can shoot 3.

Frontcourt

The Trojans 3 big men should be Aaron Fuller, Dewayne Dedmon, and James Blascyk.  Fuller was forced to sit out the 2010-11 season soon after transferring over from Iowa.  In his sophomore season for the Hawkeyes he was honorable mention on the All-Conference team with 9.7 points and almost 7 boards every night.

These players will be pushed in practice by a few transfers who will sit out this season.  Ari Stewart came over from Wake Forest and Eric Wise is a transfer from UC-Irvine.

Every single year we present our USC basketball predictions in order to get you ready to beat the NCAA basketball lines.