Despite a 6-21 record and a 1-13 mark in conference play, it appears Kevin O’Neill’s job is safe at USC.

O’Neill told ESPN.com on Tuesday that he’s “extremely confident” he’ll return for the 2012-13 season. He certainly appears to have the support of his players, who blamed USC’s dismal season on an unfathomable list of injuries.

And not the head coach.

Forward Ari Stewart said any criticism of O’Neill is “100 percent unfair.” His teammates agreed. Four of the five players who started the opening game in last summer’s exhibition tour of Brazil have been lost to season-ending surgeries.

“You could have brought the Zen Master, Phil Jackson, in here, and it wouldn’t have been too much of a difference,” guard Jio Fontan told the Orange County Register.

Fontan’s injury was the biggest. USC was already short on experience after losing three players from its 2011 NCAA tournament team. Nikola Vucevic left school early for the NBA draft and Alex Stepheson and Donte Smith graduated.

The only experienced returnees were point guard Maurice Jones and Fontan, who tore his anterior cruciate ligament during the overseas tour in August. Fontan had closed out his junior season by averaging 13.3 points in his last four games.

“When Jio went down, I knew we were in trouble,” O’Neill said.

He just didn’t realize to what extent.

Within the next five months USC had lost four more players -- including three starters -- to season-ending surgeries: center Dewayne Dedmon and forwards Curtis Washington, Evan Smith and Aaron Fuller. The Trojans' luck has been so bad that O’Neill joked he half-expected a van to fall on his head when he walked through USC’s parking garage.

In all of his stops -- Tennessee, Marquette, Northwestern, Arizona and the NBA -- O’Neill said he’s never coached a team this snakebitten, much less seen one.

“When you have five season-ending surgeries on top of an already depleted roster ... it’s hard to fight that,” O’Neill said. “I’ve been through almost every situation in my career, because I coach uphill a lot. But this year has been hard.

“I feel bad for the players.”

USC is just two losses away from setting the single-season school record. Luckily, it appears the Trojans’ administration sees the bigger picture. All of USC’s injured players will return next season, and the team will add a trio of talented transfers in Stewart (Wake Forest), Eric Wise (UC-Irvine) and J.T. Terrell, who began his career at Wake Forest before transferring to Peninsula (Fla.) Junior College, where he’s averaging 25.3 points.

Mix in Jones, a seasoned point guard who averages 13.7 points in 37 minutes per game, and emerging freshman Byron Wesley and it's easy to understand why O’Neill is so optimistic about the future. USC could go from being the worst team in the Pac-12 to one of the league’s upper-half teams.

“I think we could be really good,” O’Neill said.

This isn’t the first time O’Neill has encountered adversity since arriving in Los Angeles. USC’s program was surrounded by a cloud of turmoil when O’Neill took over in the summer of 2009. The NCAA was investigating former coach Tim Floyd and standout O.J. Mayo for their alleged involvement with an agent. The players in Floyd’s recruiting class were released from their national letters of intent. The names included Derrick Williams, Lamont “Momo” Jones, Kevin Parrom and Solomon Hill, all of whom ended up at Arizona.

Somehow, O’Neill managed to lead the Trojans to a 16-14 record in his first season -- when they were banned from the postseason -- before going 19-15 last year, when USC lost to eventual Final Four participant VCU in the NCAA tournament.

O’Neill’s success in his first two seasons may be making USC’s recent struggles harder to take for fans, many of whom have voiced their displeasure with the coach. The Trojans said the reaction has been ridiculous.

“It’s disappointing people feel that way,” Stewart told The Register. “They want to win. We understand that. It’s a business. When you’re not getting wins, you’re gong to get bashed. But the thing is, you have to look at our situation.”

It’s a situation O’Neill feels confident will improve dramatically by next season.

“I’m looking forward to coming back and coaching our group,” he said. “The group that’s playing right now ... who knows how many of those guys will be starting or playing next year? In the long run some of these struggles may help us. But right now this ins’t fun for anybody. It’s been especially frustrating for the players and fans.”

None of them, though, are blaming O’Neill.

"The guys who want to be at 'SC and really care about the program and want to move forward with the program don't want to play for anybody else," Fontan told The Register. “We all feel like K.O.'s the right guy to be here. We see the future. We've had a couple bumps in the road. You look at any team, you take away what we had taken away, everyone’s going to have the same outcome.”