Andy Enfield discusses how Drew Peterson battled through injury to play on senior night

The USC Trojans secured their 14th conference win of the season on senior night in their regular season finale, defeating Arizona State 68-65. It was senior forward Drew Peterson‘s last game in the Galen Center, as he battled injury to play in front of the Trojan’s home crowd one last time. Head coach Andy Enfield spoke about Peterson’s toughness and determination following their win over the Sun Devils.

“Well I think he still had three assists, two blocked shots, he had five rebounds,” Enfield said. “He’s our second-leading scorer, our leading rebounder, leads us in assists, and he’s become a much better defender. Now he wasn’t himself tonight, he was probably, I don’t know if he was 60 or 70, 80 percent, somewhere in there. You could see he didn’t have his explosiveness, but this senior night, he’s never missed a game in his college career.”

There’s no question that Peterson has been a valuable piece of the Trojan’s success this season averaging 14.1 points, 6.3 rebounds, and 4.5 assists per game this season, all career-high averages during his tenure with USC.

“And I didn’t think he was playing, none of us thought he was going to play. So for him to deal with the pain and go out there and play 31 minutes and help us win, that was just a really tough senior night. He showed a lot of heart and toughness,” Enfield said.

Enfield was also asked what changed regarding Peterson’s status for Saturday’s game, revealing that his back injury has been lingering for quite some time.

“His back felt a lot better, he did some therapy today and he’s been doing a lot the last few days because he probably shouldn’t have played against Arizona. He wanted to and then we took him out in the first half, I thought he was done, then he wanted to come back in the second half,” Enfield explained. “He probably should not have played against Arizona, probably just should have just sat that one out, but we have four days off now.”

Peterson had scored in double figures in 13 consecutive games prior to his games versus Arizona and Arizona State, clearly impacted by his injury. And with the Pac-12 Tournament right around the corner, Enfield is hoping Peterson and others will be at full strength soon.

“Four days before we play and we don’t play till 8:30 on Thursday, so really four and a half, so we hope to get healthy. We’ve had so many injuries this year with Vince (Iwuchukwu) being out half the season and then Josh (Morgan) and Reese (Dixon-Waters) being out for three weeks and now Drew and Vince again. To be 22-9, 14-6 in the league with not a full roster most of the season, give our guys a lot of credit.