Andy Enfield shares impact three-point shooting success had on USC

USC handled business in their California road trip, winning both of their most recent road matchups and closing it out with an 85-75 win over Stanford on Saturday night. The Trojans’ latest win was highlighted by a marvelous performance by Boogie Ellis and a great shooting performance from downtown by the entire team, which head coach Andy Enfield discussed after the win.

“Stanford’s a tough team to score against, so to score 85 on them you have to make some shots,” Enfield said. “And so Boogie made some really good plays, he got to the foul line in the second half, I think they had three team fouls with like four minutes left in the game but the three fouls were him driving to the basket.”

Ellis notched a new career high in his performance on Saturday, scoring 33 points and even getting involved as a playmaker with a career-high seven assists. He’s been the team’s leading scorer all season but took it to another level on Saturday, scoring 30-plus points for the second time this season and matching a career-high in made three-pointers hitting six from behind the arc.

Everything was working for Ellis, as he made all nine of his free throw attempts and ended the night as one of the most efficient scorers of the contests, shooting 56.3% from the field versus Stanford. There’s no question his showing was impressive, but combined with the way his teammates were shooting the ball made the Trojans’ offense attack look nearly unstoppable at times in Palo Alto.

“So it’s important to have a good mix of just making the right basketball play but attacking the basket and also kicking it out. I think the way we shot it I thought they started cheating out to our three-point shooters and gave some driving lines to him,” Enfield said.

The Trojans boast the Pac-12’s third-best scoring offense, ranking just behind Arizona and UCLA in points per game, field goal percentage, and three-point percentage, and showed that on Saturday night. Following an impressive season-high 97-point scoring outing versus Cal, USC followed it with 85 point game versus Stanford where they made 49.2% of their shots from the field and 52% from the three-point line.

Boogie and the Trojans have the hot hand right now shooting the basketball, and it will be interesting to see if they can stay hot in their three remaining regular season outings.