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USC basketball's offseason won't compare to UCLA's, with the Bruins adding on big-time recruits Kyle Anderson, Shabazz Muhammad and Tony Parker, but the Trojans will also be a heck of a lot better in 2012-13 than they were in 2011-2012.

Of course, it doesn't take a lot to be a lot better than 6-26. But 15 wins is probably the baseline for next season's Trojans team, with 20 victories and NCAA tournament contention both legitimate possibilities. To that end, here is a projection of USC's 2012-2013 roster and lineup, taking into account the Trojans' remaining scholarship slot, which stands to be used on a transfer, probably a wing player of some sort.

That could very well be former Tennessee forward Renaldo Woolridge, who's visiting USC for the second time this weekend. So we took the liberty of including him here. It also could not, as the Trojans continue to pursue other prospects.

But here is the projected 2012-2013 lineup and, in basic order of contribution to the team, the bench. We provide brief comments on each player:

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LOS ANGELES -- As far back as he can recall, USC forward Garrett Jackson has never lost more games than he's won in a single season.

Not at any level, and not at any sport, either -- and he played four growing up.

But that much is a virtual guarantee for Jackson and the USC Trojans this year. With seven games left in the 2011-2012 regular season, USC (6-18, 1-10 in the Pac-12) would essentially have to win out, take home the Pac-12 conference tournament championship and make a run to the NCAA tournament Sweet 16 to even finish with as many wins as losses.

Suffice it to say, it's not happening to a team with just two wins since November and six scholarship players suiting up most nights.

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LOS ANGELES -- They don't make shots, they don't defend well enough to win, and their free-throw shooting is abysmal.

You can combine those factors to come to a fairly easy conclusion about this year's USC Trojans basketball team. Or, if you're head coach Kevin O'Neill, you can sum it up in one succinct sentence courtesy of legendary college basketball coach Bob Knight: These Trojans won't be going to the senior prom.

"Bob Knight actually told me this one time," O'Neill said after Sunday's game, a loss. "When you make shots, you look pretty. You're the prom queen. When you don't, you don't get invited to the prom.

"And that's it."

It sure is. USC (5-12, 0-4 in the Pac-12) isn't getting invited to the prom this season -- not after a fifth-straight loss, this one by a 57-46 score to Arizona at the Galen Center. The Wildcats were in control all game in Sunday's matinee, never leading by fewer than double-digits once the game got going. USC put together a small, short run in the second half, getting within 10 points, but Arizona quickly squashed that with an and-one on the subsequent possession and two more baskets to follow.

Arizona's Jesse Perry led all scorers with 20 points, with no Trojan defender capable of matching his energy and inside-outside game. Former USC commit Solomon Hill had 11 points and a game-high 10 rebounds in 26 minutes, and Kyle Fogg also had 10 for the Wildcats, who are now 11-5 on the year and 2-1 in the Pac-12.

Maurice Jones had 14 points on 13 shots to lead USC but no assists and three turnovers. As a team, the Trojans shot a season-low 29 percent, including a miraculously bad 21 percent in the first half. The starting backcourt of Jones, Alexis Moore and Byron Wesley -- made eight of the 36 shots they attempted.

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LOS ANGELES -- This one was bad.

Bad, in that it was against a 4-9 Arizona State team with just one previous win over a major-conference squad. Bad, in that the Sun Devils played the game with just six scholarship players and managed to post their best shooting day of the season and their best road shooting day in eight years. Bad, in that USC scored the fewest points anybody's scored against ASU all season.

And bad in terms of outcome, too. The Trojans lost 62-53 to the Sun Devils on Thursday at the Galen Center, falling to 5-11 on the season and 0-3 in Pac-12 conference play.

"Our defense was very suspect," USC coach Kevin O'Neill said afterward. "We didn't do the job we normally do to give ourselves a chance to win the game."

Thursday's loss was the Trojans' seventh in their last eight games. USC's 2011-2012 season is quickly getting out of hand.

"I actually felt like we've let a lot slip away," said USC forward Dewayne Dedmon, who had eight points and seven rebounds in Thursday's loss. "But today, especially."

Carrick Felix led Arizona State with a career-high 22 points in 39 minutes. Trent Lockett, playing point guard for the first time the Sun Devils were missing two point guards because of suspension, added 19 points and four assists. The two combined to shoot a remarkable 15-of-21 -- 71 percent -- as ASU shot 61 percent as a team.

"Sure, they made some shots," O'Neill said. "But it's our job to make them miss."

"The bottom line is, if you're gonna let someone shoot 61 percent on your court, it's going to be hard to win."

Forward Aaron Fuller had a team-high 14 points for USC and guard Maurice Jones added 13, four assists and three steals.

As a team, the Trojans shot 38 percent from the field, their third straight under-40 display in Pac-12 play.

"That's not a recipe for success," O'Neill said. "That's a recipe for disaster."

Player of the game: There were no standout performances for the Trojans, but freshman guard Byron Wesley did put together a solid defensive game and double-digit offensive performance.

He finished with 10 points, four rebounds and two assists, although he did shoot just 5-of-15 from the field. One bright spot was his play on Felix, who he held to nine points in the second half after the ASU forward scored 13 points in the first half with Alexis Moore defending him.

"I thought he did a pretty good job," O'Neill said of Wesley's defense.

The 15 field-goal attempts were a career-high for Wesley, who had never attempted more than 11 in a college game.

Stat of the game: USC took 55 shots to Arizona State's 36 -- usually a great indicator of success.

But, while USC turned the ball over six times and forced 18 turnovers, the Trojans were so poor shooting the ball that they actually made fewer shots than the Sun Devils -- 21 to 22.

It was a statistical oddity.

"That's hard to figure," O'Neill said. "Any time you get 20 more shots than the opposition, you should have a great chance to win."

Quote of the game: "This isn't something that we're used to. This isn't something that we want. This isn't something that we want to be represented as, a team that plays hard but always comes up short. So we've gotta get back in the lab and do the little things so we can get over these humps." -- Moore

Moore, an 18-year-old freshman guard, has experienced losing like this before in his basketball career -- AAU ball growing up in Long Beach. But he said he refuses to accept it at this level, adding that the Trojans "have to win" their next game against Arizona.

USC is the only team in the Pac-12 still without a conference win.

Final notes: The Sun Devils played without three rotation players because reserve guard Chris Colvin and starters Keala King (Santa Ana Mater Dei) and Kyle Cain didn't make the trip to Los Angeles for "unacceptable conduct"...Because the game was not televised, the curtains at the north end of the Galen Center were open throughout the game, providing a view of the Downtown skyline...USC plays the Arizona Wildcats on Sunday at 2:30 p.m. at Galen.

Ever wonder how 7-footers fit in airplanes?

It's tough. First class is generally the only way to do it comfortably, and sitting in economy can lead to some weird and uncomfortable situations.

But the circumstances USC forward Dewayne Dedmon dealt with Saturday are perhaps some of the weirdest on record. As he tells it, he was sitting in an aisle seat near the back of a commercial flight that departed from the Bay Area late Saturday night -- New Year's Eve.

In late November, Dedmon suffered a stress injury to his right foot that was supposed to keep him out until right around this time, but he returned after missing only one game and hasn't appeared particularly hurt on the court since. But, while he is permitted to play by school doctors, he is often required to wear a boot on the foot when off the court to stabilize the injury and prevent it from getting worse.

So, as USC (5-10, 0-2 in the Pac-12) flew home from Stanford on Saturday, where the Trojans lost 51-43 to the Cardinal, Dedmon was wearing the boot in the aisle seat and was apparently causing some significant trouble for the flight attendants on board the plane.

Why? Because the booted foot -- coupled with his large frame, of course -- was unable to be fit inside the normal confines of the seat, which prevented the stewards from doing their job.

"You know how they bring the carts up?" Dedmon recounted Wednesday after the Trojans practiced in preparation for Arizona State. "She was stopping the cart because she couldn't pass me. And she was just walking up the aisles handing some people their drinks.

"And so, before the flight ended, she got on the intercom and said, "I'm sorry for anybody that didn't get their drinks. We have an overly large man with a broken foot on our flight."

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LOS ANGELES -- USC's defense is legitimately great.

The Trojans consistently hold teams far below their per-game point averages and force them to alter their offensive gameplans.

It's unfortunate, then, that they're also incredibly inept on the offensive side of the ball. If the Trojans were even average at putting the ball in the basket, they'd probably be staring at a top-two finish in the Pac-12 conference and an NCAA tournament bid.

But they're not, and so Kevin O'Neill's ragtag squad of undersized athletes, junior-college discoveries and major-college transfers will continue to lose games like Thursday's to Kansas, 63-47.

"We're always going to defend well enough to have a chance to win," O'Neill said after Thursday's game. "It's whether we can make enough plays or not.

"Tonight, unfortunately, we just didn't do that."

As O'Neill indicated, it wasn't that the Jayhawks overpowered USC. Kansas came up more than 12 points short of its season average and shot just over 40 percent from the field. None of Bill Self's players scored more than 14 points.

It was just that the Trojans (5-8) couldn't score -- at all. They scored 13 points total in the first half, with four each from Aaron Fuller and Alexis Moore. Fuller finished with 19 points to lead all scorers, but Maurice Jones' seven were second, and they came on 13 shot attempts.

And, with that, even the USC defense faded some late. After holding Kansas (8-3) to 25 points in the first half, the Jayhawks responded with 38 in the second, shooting 50 percent from the field after converting just 33 percent in the first 20 minutes.

Guard Elijah Johnson led the Jayhawks with 14. Conner Teahan added 13 for Kansas, who was playing its first true road game of the season and coming off an upset loss to Davidson earlier in the week.

"The game was a grinder, and we knew it was going to be like that," Self said afterward. "They wore us out in the game."

Said O'Neill: "It's hard to keep playing good defense when you just cannot seem to get anything going,"

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LOS ANGELES -- If only they could start how they finished, the USC Trojans might actually have a pretty good record at this point.

Instead, they're 4-6 now on the season and need to sweep their remaining three non-conference games to avoid beginning Pac-12 play with a losing record. Saturday's 44-41 loss to New Mexico was just the latest example of what's been an ugly trend for Kevin O'Neill's Trojans this season.

In all six of the losses, USC has trailed early -- and often trailed big. And the Trojans had chances to win late in all but one of them. Against the Lobos on Saturday, the Trojans fought back from a double-digit deficit to take a late lead, 41-40, with 1:51 to go in the game on a 3-point play from Dewayne Dedmon, but they quickly squandered it on the next possession.

USC ended up outscoring New Mexico by five in the second half after entering the break down by eight. A few more minutes and USC might have overtaken the Lobos for good. But the slow start -- the Trojans trailed 23-10 more than 18 minutes into the game -- ended up doing them in.

"I know that," Dedmon said after the game, when asked if the Trojans would be better off with more balanced first- and second-half play. "I know we would have a better record. We just gotta come out strong in the first half like we come out in the second half.

"We've gotta figure out a way to get everybody that second-half mentality in the first half."

After the first five minutes of the game, USC didn't lead Saturday's contest once until the final 111 seconds.

"It's been like that the entire year," O'Neill said. "We eased into the game and that got us into a hole."

Maurice Jones led the Trojans with 19 points. Dedmon added seven. UCLA transfer Drew Gordon had a team-high 13 points for New Mexico and Riverside King product Tony Snell added 10.

The teams combined to make just 30 field goals in the gam and produce 39 turnovers and just 15 assists.

"It was an ugly game," said New Mexico coach Steve Alford. "We came out and wanted to play up-tempo. But then they kind of slowed it down."

Alford added the Trojans "bored" his Lobos with their defensive strategies.

Player of the game: Jones kept the Trojans afloat all game. His 19 points were a game-high, although they did come on 7-of-18 shooting.

Alford spotlighted USC's 5-6 point guard in his postgame press conference, saying he was "quick" and could "get and go." But O'Neill said he envisions his No. 1 scorer shooting the ball even more if the Trojans are going to be successful this season.

"He can always be more aggressive," O'Neill said.

Stat of the game: New Mexico didn't make a field goal in the final 14 minutes and 16 seconds of the contest and still won.

It's rare for a team to go half that long without scoring and pull off a victory. To do it for more than an entire NBA quarter -- at the end of the game, no less -- and still win is simply remarkable.

Trend of the game: The Trojans held the Lobos to their lowest scoring total this season by nine points, proving once again that USC's issues aren't on the defensive side of the ball. The defense is top-notch, really, and, if USC can continue to hold teams under 50 points, some wins will come.

Maybe not a lot, but some.

"Our defense is way ahead of where we expected it to be," O'Neill said Saturday, reiterating what he said at practice this week. "I'm happy with a lot of what we're doing. We're just not able to get wins."

Quote of the game: "Of course we're behind offensively. The day (senior guard) Jio (Fontan) tore his knee in Brazil, we were behind offensively. -- O'Neill

If USC is ahead of schedule defensively yet behind it overall, it must mean the Trojans are severely behind schedule on the offensive end. O'Neill scoffed when asked that question after Saturday's game and then said, "Come on."

81 points in their last two games clearly shows that the Trojans are struggling.

Notes: Redshirt sophomore forward Evan Smith made his season debut in the first half for the Trojans, missing a 3-point attempt on his first possession. He hadn't played in game in two full seasons due to nagging shoulder injuries that required surgery...The 15 points scored by the Trojans in the first half were the fewest in a period in O'Neill's three seasons. The team's previous low was 16, done twice this season in losses to Cal Poly and Minnesota...Announced attendance at the Galen Center for the Trojans' first home game in two weeks was 3,863.

New Mexico is the break, really.

Kevin O'Neill's USC Trojans (4-5) have a two-week break between stretches of four games in eight days and three games in five days. The only thing breaking up the break is Saturday's 4 p.m. matchup against the visiting New Mexico Lobos at the Galen Center.

Finals, lasting until Wednesday the 14th, are the reason for the time off. But the Trojans are trying to use it to their advantage. They'll get one last week of preparation before Pac-12 play begins later this month, but this is the last chance until then they'll get to reset their season and start anew.

"It is an important time," O'Neill says, simply, mentioning the road-heavy schedule USC embarked on in the early part of the year and the tough opponents the Trojans will play later this month in TCU and No. 13 Kansas. During this time, he wants to focus on his team getting better in one area: defense.

That's not to say defense is USC's weakness. It's actually arguably the team's biggest strength. Rather, O'Neill wants the Trojans to focus on defense because he realizes that the team's other areas of struggle -- free-throw shooting and 3-point shooting, namely -- are not things that are going to be shored up suddenly.

It's like this: Either you spend your time working on something you know can get better with time, or you take a gamble and try to get lucky with the other stuff. O'Neill's picking the former, not the latter, even though his team's shooting a miserable 59 percent from the free-throw line and 29 percent from 3.

"It is what it is," he says. "We're pretty good defensively, for this point in the season. I like a lot of the things our guys have done."

Other things he likes include a low amount of turnovers and better rebounding. The Trojans' assist numbers are low, but their 13-turnover average isn't terrible. And Aaron Fuller's team-leading rebounding numbers have been important, although he's been bothered by some nagging injuries this year.

Another player nagged by injuries: forward Dewayne Dedmon, who was supposed to be out right now with a stress injury in his foot. Instead, he returned quickly and plans to play against New Mexico.

All of this, of course, could lead to speculation that the rest of this season is a sort of try-out for next season -- a rebuilding season, if you will. But O'Neill squashed any talk of that.

"I'm not thinking that at all," he said Thursday after the Trojans' two-hour practice. "I'm thinking we're gonna be a postseason team.

"We're planning on trying to play after the season's done."

Key players for Steve Alford's New Mexico team include guards Tony Snell and Kendall Williams, both Southern California natives, and forward Drew Gordon, he who once went to UCLA. The fourth scorer is a 6-2 guard named Demetrius Walker who was long the country's No. 1 player as a teenager.

The Lobos have reeled off four straight wins over the likes of Washington State and Boston College.

LOS ANGELES -- He looked around the arena, soaking it all in, and gave his one of wide-mouthed smiles. He had the look of a man ready to start off a season.

But, inside, Dewayne Dedmon was freaking out.

Just before tip-off of USC's 2011-2012 season opener against Cal State Northridge on Friday at the Galen Center, Dedmon, the Trojans' 7-foot sophomore forward, tensed up for a second and realized what he was about to do.

In seconds, he'd officially be starting a game for the USC Trojans and getting his basketball career truly underway. He's played at other places -- a few minutes here and there in high school and as a post presence but little else for one season in junior college -- but never before was he counted on in such a big way.

Dedmon knew how important he was to his team's success -- both in Friday's game and in the 2011-2012 season in total. And that freaked him out, momentarily. Then he discarded those thoughts, won his team the tip-off and got to work on making his debut a success.

"After that, it was just, 'Let's get out here, and let's play,'" Dedmon said later.

He played, alright. Dedmon had his first points just 95 seconds after the tip when he dunked in a pass from point guard Maurice Jones, and he had eight points less than nine minutes into the game after he converted three straight jumpers.

Dedmon, who didn't start playing organized basketball until he was 18, finished the game with 16 points, eight rebounds and three blocks in 25 minutes, leading the Trojans to a 66-59 win over Cal State Northridge.

"I thought he played very well for the first time playing," USC coach Kevin O'Neill said after the game. "I mean, that's more than he scored his entire high school career.

"This guy's never played. I don't know how to compare it, he's just never had a chance to play at this level."

There certainly were issues: He didn't box out well at all and lost out on several rebounds as a direct result. His right hand, which had been in a cast for much of the last month until this week, appeared to betray him on occasion. He got in foul trouble and had to sit out the final eight minutes of the first half and then had to come out of the game in the second with cramps in his right leg.

USC (1-0) didn't play particularly well as a team, either. Dedmon was one of three players with 16 points for the Trojans -- forward Aaron Fuller and guard Maurice Jones were the others -- but O'Neill's squad turned the ball over 20 times and let visiting Cal State Northridge take a 4-point lead with five minutes to go.

From there, Dedmon and Jones combined to score 12 of USC's final 16 points to secure the victory.

"We're happy to get any win," O'Neill said. "It beats the alternative."

Player of the game: Fuller quietly dominated the paint for the Trojans, putting up a team-high-tying 16 points and a game-high nine rebounds.

USC ran very few plays for him, but he managed to come up with points just fine. He said O'Neill instructed him to make himself available near the top of the key to Maurice Jones.

He did it often, and didn't miss many of his shots either, going 5-of-7 from the field and 6-of-7 from the free-throw line.

"I thought Aaron Fuller had a great night," O'Neill said. "He really stepped up and made some great clutch plays."

"I thought Aaron did a great job getting to the middle of the court in the meat of their defense and making plays around the basket, getting to the basket and then getting to the foul line and making a few shots too."

Stat of the game: USC shot 15 3-point attempts and didn't convert a single one, good for precisely zero percent shooting from long range.

Jones and freshman guard Alexis Moore were the biggest perpetrators, each throwing up seven shots from deep. Walk-on Eric Strangis had the other failed attempt.

O'Neill has said all preseason that his team clearly lacked outside shooting, but nobody knew it was going to be this bad. He played Moore extensively -- 31 minutes -- because of his 3-point shooting acumen, but he wasn't pleased with a few of the freshman's shot selections.

"Obviously (0-for-15) is unacceptable," O'Neill said. "But I'm not worried about that at all. For the most part, I thought we had wide-open 3's. It's just somewhat we're going to have do, and we will. That's all there is to it."

Trend of the game: O'Neill started Strangis at shooting guard in a clear message to the other competitors for the spot that more was expected from them, but USC's lineup in the final seven minutes made it clear who O'Neill sees as the team's top-five players at this point in time.

The five: Jones, Moore, Wesley, Fuller and Dedmon. Asked about that trend afterward, O'Neill went off on a mini-rant on his displeasure with Moore's poor play of late.

"You know, Alexis isn't playing very well -- hasn't played very well in practice the last couple weeks, and he didn't play very well tonight," O'Neill said. "But he's a freshman, and when you're a freshman like that, you're just not going to play well. It's just the way it is.

"Unless you're one of these super guys that can drop off the moon like some of North Carolina's freshmen ... I know these guys are gonna struggle, but we've gotta play them."

Quote of the game: "Our guys think this is a kung-fu match. They think the harder I chop a guy, uh, boy, I'm a tough. I'm really tough, because I double-chopped him to the ground. Wow. That's not toughness. That's not smart basketball. What these guys need to understand is tough means doing the right thing all the time." -- O'Neill

The third-year USC coach was upset about his team's 20 turnovers and other various errors and was referencing the tomahawk-chop gesture Dedmon demonstrated after each of his three blocks.

Notes: Former USC stars DeMar DeRozan and Taj Gibson sat courtside for the game and were shown on the video board during the first half. DeRozan, who plays for the NBA's Toronto Raptors, was accompanied by teammate Ed Davis...Because the game was not broadcast on television, arena operators were able to keep the curtains open on the north side of the Galen Center, allowing for a view of the nighttime skyline in Downtown...The men's game was preceded by the women's basketball season opener, which the No. 23 Women of Troy won over Fresno State, 65-57...The announced crowd was 5,172.

Let’s get this out of the way, first off: 22-year-old USC forward Dewayne Dedmon is like nothing you’ve ever seen before.

Not necessarily better than anything you’ve ever seen, just different – significantly different.

He’s 7 feet tall, having grown four full inches between ages 18 and 21. He’s 255 pounds, having also gained upwards of 50 pounds in that same span.

And now for the weird but true, in progressive order: He’s the second-fastest player on the USC basketball team, coming in behind only 5-6 point guard Maurice Jones. He can play point guard in a pinch, Trojans coach Kevin O’Neill says. And, maybe the craziest statistic of them all: Counting exhibitions and summer league games and everything with an official and a game clock, he’s played in fewer than 100 organized basketball games in his life.

Truthfully, the last four years of Dedmon’s life – basketball-wise, at least -- have had to take the place of most kids’ entire adolescence, and probably more. He didn’t start playing organized basketball until he was 18 years old, and, even then, he didn’t play much at all until his second year of junior college.

And even then, he broke a bone in his forehead two months into the season and sat out a month. Now, 11 months since he arrived at USC, he’s finally almost fully healthy, having broken a bone in his shooting hand a less than a week into practice this October. He had to wear a gigantic makeshift cast on his right hand to be able to take part in practices until Tuesday of this week, when he had the thing removed once and for all.

He’s not pain-free, but he’s cast-free, and that’s a big step.

“This is how I explain him: He’s 7-foot and he runs like a deer,” says Jio Fontan, the USC basketball team’s captain, likely out for the 2011-2012 season with a torn ACL. “I tell people all the time, if you saw him in jogging pants just walking into the gym and asked him to shoot a jump shot, he’s gonna show you he’s a little different.

“He shoots the ball like a guard, plain and simple. But give him time. Understand that not only has he not played that many years of basketball, but he’s also just coming off sitting a whole year out.

“He’s gonna be special. It’s just gonna take time.”

The thing is, USC doesn’t have any time. Dedmon’s first major college game is Friday at 8 p.m. against Cal State Northridge, the Trojans’ 2011-12 season opener. It’ll be his first real game since February 2010. And O’Neill needs him to be the team’s No. 2 scorer and No. 1 rebounder in order the Trojans to have any real chance of getting back to the NCAA tournament this season.

It’s unlikely, but that’s what everyone said last year at this same time. And USC ended up finishing with 19 wins and sneaking into the First Four of the tourney.

Then the Trojans lost top scorer Nikola Vucevic to the NBA draft, starters Alex Stepheson, Marcus Simmons and Donte Smith to graduation and Fontan to injury. The question now is whether O’Neill can manage his new, similarly patchwork squad to similar heights.

Let’s break it down, splitting it up by backcourt and frontcourt:

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Around this time last year, USC Trojans basketball coach Kevin O'Neill made a prediction for his team's fate for the upcoming season that proved exactly true over the course of the year.

Forwards Nikola Vucevic and Alex Stepheson, O'Neill said last October, would carry the Trojans throughout the 2010-2011 season. They might carry them up, he implied, or they might carry them down, he didn't know for sure -- but he knew they would carry them.

Vucevic had an unexpectedly good year, vaulting himself into the first round of the NBA draft and the team into the first round of the NCAA tournament; Stepheson was effective but nowhere near dominant. And so the Trojans lost to Virginia Commonwealth in that first round, ending their seasons prematurely.

As the USC Trojans began practice Friday, seven months after the VCU loss and two months since they had last officially convened as a team in advance of the exhibition trip to Brazil, it was clear things had changed.

The fate of the 2011-2012 version of the Trojans will also depend on two players, O'Neill again says. But this time it's an all new cast of characters: Maurice Jones, who counts as one of the two, and forwards James Blasczyk, Dewayne Dedmon and Aaron Fuller, as O'Neill groups the trio together as one general 'big man.'

With supposed senior leader Jio Fontan likely out for the season with a torn ACL, those two -- er, four -- will determine just about everything with this team this year.

"What we do down the middle of the court, point guard and inside, is going to decide how good we're gonna be," O'Neill said Saturday, after the Trojans' second official practice of the season.

Moving Jones to point guard indicates an increased sense of confidence in him from O'Neill. The 5-7 sophomore was slated to play off guard this season alongside Fontan, and, when Fontan went down in Brazil, O'Neill indicated that freshman Alexis Moore would slide up into the point guard spot and Jones would stay off the ball.

That's changed.

"Mo's going to play the point," O'Neill said Saturday. "I don't know what it's going to do, but he's going to play the point."

Part of that is Jones, who noticeably talks and acts much more like a leader than he did last season, as a true freshman some 2,000-plus miles away from home in Michigan. And part of that is Moore, who proved over the last two months to be a risky proposition as an immediate starter.

"I just feel like it's too much pressure for him to be the starting point guard," O'Neill said. "He's going to play some point, obviously. And we're running what is probably going to be a two-guard offense, but I just don't want the pressure to be on him.

"I don't think he's ready for that yet."

Jones played the point at the start of his freshman season and had some great games, including a memorable 29-point performance in his second college contest. But his numbers tapered off toward the end of the year, and he was supplanted in the starting lineup late in the year as he began to show on-court signs of weariness.

But he's this team's No. 1 scoring option this season. USC is going to run its offense around him. And that's where the decision to move him back in control of the ball comes from.

"I'm trying to devise ways for Mo to score when he's on the ball and ways when he's off to get it back to him," O'Neill said."I think he's a special player, and I think he'll find a way."

Either he'll find a way, or the Trojans won't find theirs, either.

USC senior point guard Jio Fontan suffered a potentially serious left knee injury during the second quarter of the Trojans' eventual 81-70 loss to Mogi das Cruzes in Sao Paulo on Tuesday.

X-rays on the knee were negative, a team spokesperson said, but Fontan will undergo an MRI exam Wednesday. As of now, it's being called a sprain.

"I'm always worried about any injury," O'Neill said by phone from Sao Paulo late Tuesday. "But we won't know anything until tomorrow."

USC was up by six at the time Fontan went out of the game, but the Trojans quickly fell behind without their captain and senior leader. Forward Aaron Fuller also missed the game with an illness, so USC was forced to play walk-on Eric Strangis extensive minutes and work newcomers Greg Allen, Alexis Moore and Byron Wesley into the rotation.

O'Neill said they were in a "little over their heads."

Sophomore guard Maurice Jones led the team with 17 points and eight rebounds and center Dewayne Dedmon had his best game yet with 15 points, five rebounds and three blocks. Forward Garrett Jackson added 12 points and six rebounds and Fontan had eight points at the time of his injury.

"We actually played well, against another good team," O'Neill said. "Our guys did a great job."

USC will travel from Sao Paulo to Rio de Janeiro Wednesday and then play its final game of the trip on Friday in Rio. The Trojans had planned on playing a game Wednesday or Thursday in one of the two cities, but those plans have been scrapped.

Senior point guard Jio Fontan nearly led the Trojans to a comeback victory in their second game of a 10-day Brazil trip Monday, scoring 28 points as they fell 87-81 to Sao Jose dos Campos, a first-division Brazilian pro team.

Fontan got into early foul trouble in the second quarter as USC trailed by double-digits but came back to put up a barrage of points in the third and fourth periods, as the game was played by international rules. The margin got as close as four points late in the fourth.

The game was originally intended to be a scrimmage, which would've allowed newcomers Alexis Moore, Greg Allen and Byron Wesley to take part in their first official competitions as Trojans. But USC coach Kevin O'Neill and his staff made a decision earlier Monday to play an official game, which kept the trio out until at least Tuesday, when summer-school grades are posted by the school.

"If we wouldn't have played a bad second quarter, we would've won the game," O'Neill said by phone from Sao Paulo. "We just didn't have enough juice, playing a back-to-back and playing without Byron, Alexis, and Greg.

"The team we played today was very, very good."

Other top performers for the Trojans included guard Maurice Jones, who scored 20 points, and forward Garrett Jackson, who scored 11 points and added 10 rebounds for his second-straight double-digit day on the boards. 7-footers James Blasczyk and Dewayne Dedmon again had trouble adjusting to the international style of play, combining for just 13 points and 14 rebounds. Dedmon did add four blocks.

But Fontan, the 6-foot Fordham transfer who was the Trojans' second-leading scorer last season, was USC's most dominating player for the second straight game in Brazil. On Sunday, in the exhibition opener, he had 29 points in leading the team to a nine-point victory over a second-division pro team in Sao Paulo.

"He's really stepped his game up," O'Neill said of Fontan. "He's in much better shape. He's got a little experience now, and he's played very, very well.

"He's played like you want your captain to play."

USC now has games scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday in Sao Paulo and then one more in Rio de Janeiro on Friday, O'Neill said.

Senior point guard Jio Fontan scored 29 points to lead USC to a 60-51 win over Brazilian Division II outfit Pindamonhangaba in Sao Paulo Sunday, the Trojans' first of five scheduled games over a 10-day trip in Brazil this month.

With freshmen Byron Wesley and Alexis Moore and juco transfer Greg Allen not allowed to play until summer-school grades are posted Tuesday, the Trojans had just seven scholarship players available. Fontan scored 14 points in the second quarter to give USC a 31-25 lead at halftime, and transfer Aaron Fuller, playing in his first game for the Trojans, scored seven points in the fourth period to seal the game.

“We didn’t play particularly well, but I thought we played well defensively,” coach Kevin O’Neill said in a statement. “We played hard, but we have a lot of things to work on.”

The game, played in front of an estimated 425 fans at Pindamonhangaba's Centro Esportivo, used a 24-second shot clock and was split into four 10-minute periods.

Fontan's 29 points led all scorers. Fuller added 12 points and 10 rebounds for the Trojans and sophomore forward Garrett Jackson added eight points and 11 rebounds. Highly-touted center Dewayne Dedmon scored four points in limited minutes, accumulating four quick fouls.

USC has a scheduled scrimmage Monday against Sao Jose dos Campos, another team in the city of Sao Paulo. But the plan is to not keep score, which should allow the newcomers to suit up. The Trojans will then play an official exhibition on Tuesday against Division I team Mogi das Cruzes and travel on Wednesday to Rio de Janeiro.

Trojans coach Kevin O'Neill and his team practiced one last time Thursday before they jet off for a land far, far away on Friday, as they'll spend the next 10 days in Brazil and land back in Los Angeles Aug. 21.

Thursday's session was quick, lasting under an hour. But it served its primary purpose all the same: to cement O'Neill's vision of the starting lineup and bench roles. Here's what he has planned for the trip, where the Trojans will play four games against Brazilian professional teams and one scrimmage:

PG: Jio Fontan

SG: Mo Jones

SF: Evan Smith

PF: Aaron Fuller

C: Dewayne Dedmon

Off the bench: F Garrett Jackson, G Greg Allen, G Byron Wesley, G Alexis Moore, C James Blasczyk

O'Neill also plans to play walk-ons Eric Strangis, Tyler Sugiyama and Daniel Munoz, all guards. Transfer forwards Ari Stewart and Eric Wise are sitting out the 2011-2012 season and are thus not eligible for the trip, per NCAA rules.

Also making the trip with the Trojans is senior associate athletic director Steve Lopes.

In other basketball news, USC has hired a new director of basketball operations, Jamal Boddie, a 2009 graduate of the University of Arizona who worked as a manager for the Wildcats while O'Neill was the head coach. The previous director, Ryan Hennick, spent two seasons on the job before resigning in the offseason.