After not winning a game in Nashville since our tournament title in 2019, this was an emphatic way to break that streak. Beating a top 15 team by 40 at home was a historic performance. Obliterating them again a month later on a neutral floor is even more impressive. USC guys were talking yesterday about how this game would be different because it was not in the jungle. Blowing them out like this not only put that idea to rest, it proves to our guys they are capable of being a dominant team away from the friendly confines of Neville Arena. Hopefully the NCAAT Committee had this one on as they worked on the brackets today. I certainly would not want to be a 1 seed forced to line up with a 4 seed team ranked #4 in KP (should jump AZ again after today) that can murder a solid team like USC on a neutral court. USC was very good against basically everyone else this year other than us. Unreal we beat them by a combined 71 points over both meetings.
Broome delivered one of his best performances of the year today. There was no quiet first half. He came out and scored on our opening possession and was the driving force on offense and defense the whole way. Added 3 assists with 0 turnovers to his double double to make it an all around elite performance. Today he showed why he is the #2 player in the country in KP's Player of the Year ranking. No way this man should have been relegated to 3rd team All American.
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Cheney was our second leading scorer. More than that, he delivered at key moments where USC could have climbed back in the game. Late in the first half, they cut the lead to 10 before Cheney knocked down a 3 and and scored on the following possession to get the lead back to 15. That 5 point run was one of the keys to why this game turned into a massacre. Just an absolute back breaker right when USC thought they might be able to cut the game to single digits before the half.
Tre only scored 5 points today, but he did it on an efficient 2/3 shooting. The real highlight was 4 assists, 0 turnovers. Add that to Aden and Denver who also had zero turnovers. KD had the only TO today for one of our guards. As a team, we had 14 assists to 4 turnovers. That is a great recipe for success. The games we have lost this year have been ones where mistakes killed us. We are good enough that when we aren't being sloppy and giving the other team easy points off turnovers, we are extremely tough to beat.
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It's doubtful we will ever get a more favorable draw in the SECT than what we have this year. Quarters against a team we had beaten by 40. MSU takes care of the regular season champion and now we get to face them again after handling them with ease a few weeks ago. They showed at their place they are capable of beating us if we aren't on our game. Play like anywhere in the same range as we did today though and we will beat them by 15+ again. Let's run them out of the gym and force the Committee to think about whether they really want to screw a 1 seed by lining them up with us as a 4.
