Boogie Ellis assesses USC's start to this season

USC has reached the ten-game mark of the basketball season, getting off to a 7-3 start in their tenth season under head coach Andy Enfield. Trojans’ guard Boogie Ellis gave his assessment of the first third of the season as the senior is in the midst of his second season with the Trojans after transferring from Memphis.

“It’s been a great experience, just having another opportunity, another year to just compete at the highest level,” Ellis said.

The Trojans had a rough start to the year, falling in upset fashion to Florida Gulf Coast on opening night 74-61 after entering the matchup as 18-point favorites. Their only other two losses were in the Bahamas as a part of the Bad Boy Mowers Battle 4 Atlantis where they fell to Wisconsin and to a Tennessee team in overtime that was ranked No. 22 at the time and is now ranked No. 6.

“We had some tough games in the Bahamas, we fell short, we felt like we needed to win those games but we came back here and then we figured out the mistakes that we made, regrouped, and then we’re just trying to get better every day,” Ellis explained.

Ellis played his best basketball of the season in the Bahamas despite their overall team struggles, averaging 21 points in his three games in Atlantis. Ellis is currently the Trojans leading scorer, averaging 14.4 points per game while also leading the team in three-point percentage at 36.5%.

The Trojans haven’t lost since they left the Bahamas, going 3-0 including two Pac-12 conference victories to start the season undefeated in conference play. They face Long Beach State in their next matchup before hosting No. 19 ranked Auburn on Sunday, a game with big postseason implications.

“We’ve got a big test on Sunday, but you know that you have to take that game by game, we gotta beat Long Beach Wednesday and then Sunday’s gonna be a good game for us,” Ellis said. “It’s a Quad-1 win game, it’s gonna help our resume, pretty much a resume game for March.”

Ellis is referring to the NCAA’s College basketball NET rankings that are used in evaluating teams and building their resume ahead of the NCAA tournament. The quadrant system is used to measure the quality of wins and losses, with Quadrant 1 being the highest value, comprising home games against top 30 opponents, neutral site games versus top 50 opponents, and away games versus top 75 opponents.

The Trojans Quadrant 1 game versus Auburn can be caught on ESPN at 5:30 p.m. ET this Sunday.