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USC basketball on Wednesday officially announced the signing of guard Brendyn Taylor (Los Angeles, Calif./Fairfax) as the third member of its 2012 recruiting class.

Taylor, a 6-2 guard with limited prep experience the past two seasons because of CIF transfer rules, joins Wake Forest transfer J.T. Terrell and Serbian prep Strahinja Gavrilovic as 2012 signees. He averaged 18 points, five rebounds and 3.5 assists per game at Fairfax last season and committed to the Trojans early last month.

"Brendyn has a great upside,” USC coach Kevin O'Neill said in a statement. “He is an athletic wing who’s best days are ahead of him. He is going to be a major plus both on and off the court for USC.

Taylor’s father, Brian, played 10 seasons in the NBA and ABA, earning ABA Rookie of the Year honors. His older brother, Bryce, played at Oregon and now plays professionally in Europe.

USC now has one scholarship slot remaining to sign a player in the spring signing period, which concludes May 16. Wednesday marked the first day recruits could sign with schools after the early signing period in November.

The Trojans are pursuing a number of potential transfers for that spot, including former Tennessee forward Renaldo Woolridge, former Drake guard Rayvonte Rice and Brazilian big man Renan Lenz, a junior-college product.

Kevin O'Neill's USC Trojans had already lost for the final time this season, a 55-40 second-half laugher to UCLA in the opening round of Wednesday's Pac-12 tournament at the Staples Center.

He had just completed his press-conference obligations and his players had just filed onto the team bus to go back home. He was saying his goodbyes to a few conference administrators and making his way -- eventually -- home, too.

Then he was asked a question that stopped his movements for a bit: Would this, this latest debacle, be his last game as USC's basketball coach? Did he fully expect to be back next season for his fourth with the Trojans?

"I'm assuming I'm back," O'Neill said. "I think we'd be having a meeting right now if I wasn't. That's what you would think, right?"

Then he paused and pulled out his BlackBerry.

"Wait a minute," he said. "Let me check my texts."

He scrolled through some of the several-dozen unread e-mails on his phone from the last three hours and smiled.

"I'm back," he pronounced. "I'm back."

It sure seems like it. Despite a program-worst 6-26 record this season and a dreadful 1-19 stretch to end the season, USC athletic director Pat Haden has said over and over this year he has no plans to fire O'Neill. Next season, Haden has said, will be the one on which he's judged -- when he gets three key players back healthy and three transfers newly eligible.

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LOS ANGELES -- Almost everything about the USC basketball team's 2011-2012 season has been a full-fledged disappointment, from the Trojans' 6-24 record to the injuries that have ravaged the squad to downright embarrassing attendance numbers at the Galen Center.

Then there's freshman Byron Wesley, who continues to be the lone bright spot in a very dark canvas. The 6-5 guard set another career-high on Thursday in the Trojans' 80-58 loss to Washington, scoring a game-high 23 points on 10-of-18 shooting.

"If there's anything good about our season," USC coach Kevin O'Neill said after Thursday's game, "it's that this guy is really becoming a guy that's going to be hard to reckon with going forward in this league."

Wesley could now finish the season averaging double-digit points per game with strong performances in the regular-season finale against Washington State on Saturday and the Pac-12 tourney.

In his first five games, the Rancho Cucamonga native averaged 4.2 points per game. In his last five, he's putting up 18.4. He's also shooting 51 percent (37 of 72 attempts) in his last five compared to 27 percent (9 of 33) in his first five.

It's not hard to see the improvement.

Said O'Neill: "He is taking advantage of his opportunity, and good players do that."

Forward Garrett Jackson added 14 points for the Trojans. Washington's Terrence Ross led the Huskies with 18 points and forward Darnell Gant, an L.A. native, had 14 and a game-high nine rebounds.

Player of the game: Wesley was clearly USC's top performer; center James Blasczyk did have a career-high 10 points but only added three rebounds in his 33 minutes.

"This guy's becoming a premier player in this league," O'Neill said of Wesley.

Ross shot 8-of-13 from the field on his way to his 18 points. O'Neill said he looked at him as a prototypical NBA shooting guard, as long as he continued to improve his defense.

A sophomore, Ross is rated by most NBA draft prognosticators as a likely first-round selection in June's NBA draft if he chooses to declare.

Stat of the game: Washington (21-8, 14-3 in the Pac-12) out-rebounded the Trojans 49-23, the 16th-straight time USC has been out-rebounded this season.

"We miss so many shots that people get a lot of defensive rebounds," O'Neill said. "They're bigger and stronger than us. We don't have the capability to out-rebound people this year."

The last time the Trojans had more rebounds than an opponent was December 29 on the road against Cal, when they somehow produced 38 rebounds to the Bears' 25.

Quote of the game: "Kevin O'Neill is a testament to good coaching. They have one game left and have lost a lot of tough games and he is still fighting. He has been fighting all season." -- Washington coach Lorenzo Romar

His Huskies locked up a share of the Pac-12 regular-season title on Thursday, but it was interesting that Romar took time to praise O'Neill's coaching abilities in his postgame press conference. The two men have been complementary of each other in their three shared years in the conference.

Final notes: Attendance at the Galen Center was announced at 2,763, the lowest-ever number for a Pac-12 game in the history of the facility...With Senior Day on Saturday, O'Neill said he might start his lone senior -- walk-on guard Eric Strangis -- in the 3 p.m. contest against Washington State. For that game, the first 2,000 fans in attendance will receive a Maurice Jones bobblehead...With a 1-16 Pac-12 record, the Trojans are now locked into the No. 12 seed for the Pac-12 tourney, meaning they will play the No. 5-seeded team at 2:30 p.m. PT next Wednesday.

Kevin O'Neill has been doing this for a long time.

He's been an assistant for 33 years and a head coach for half that, 16 seasons, 15 of which have come at the major-college level. Overall, he's won some but lost slightly more, experiencing both mind-numbingly bad seasons -- like a 5-25 record at Northwestern in 1999-2000 -- and fairly great ones, like a Sweet 16 appearance and 24-9 mark at Marquette in 1993-1994.

So, yes, with five games left in the 2011-2012 season, USC's third-year head man is fully aware of how badly his Trojans are doing this year, of how they look like locks go down as the worst-ever team in school history and of how he might very well break his own losses record.

Has his job, then, lost any and all semblance of fun?

Just about. But that doesn't mean he's going to stop doing it, or stop approaching it in the same way. He's been through situations like this before, he maintains. This might be different, with four key players now out with season-ending injuries, but it's not that different.

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LOS ANGELES -- It's getting to the point now where it's near-impossible to expect the USC Trojans to beat any opponent.

They'll compete the whole game and they'll stay within reach -- at least for the first half -- but they just won't win. There's not enough offense, there's not enough depth and there's not enough experience.

The lowly Trojans kept visiting Stanford close for almost 30 minutes on Sunday at the Galen Center but couldn't keep up down the stretch and fell, 59-47.

"This is the same old thing," USC coach Kevin O'Neill said afterward. "We had our chances, honestly. We've had our chances a lot.

"I thought we played pretty hard, pretty well. But when you're not making your shots, you're not making 'em."

USC (6-20, 1-12 in the Pac-12) is now nearing all-time worst status. The Trojans' most-ever losses in a single season came into 1988-1989, when they went 10-22. Their worst-ever winning percentage came in 1976-1977, when they were 6-20.

It's very likely they'll break both of those marks this season. With five regular-season games remaining and adding on a likely loss somewhere in the Pac-12 tournament, USC has to win four of its next five to not break the school record for losses.

Currently, the Trojans have won four of their last 21, dating back to Thanksgiving.

Stanford freshman Chasson Randle led all scorers with 16 points Sunday; Byron Wesley and Greg Allen each had 13 points for the Trojans and Maurice Jones added 10 points but on 2-of-14 shooting.

Player of the game: Wesley, a freshman, was assigned to defend Stanford leading scorer and senior Josh Owens for most of the evening and did an admirable job, according to O'Neill.

Owens, who has three inches and 30 pounds on Wesley, had 15 points on 6-of-8 shooting. But the Trojans' freshman didn't have a bad game, either -- scoring 13 points in 37 minutes.

He also added two assists, a block and a steal while playing his fourth-straight game of 37 or more minutes.

"I love the way Byron Wesley plays," O'Neill said after Sunday's game. "I like his aggressiveness. He fights hard."

10 of Wesley's points came in the first 13 minutes of the game. He was then shut out for 25 minutes, until the 1:35 mark of the second half.

Wesley attributed that to a zone-defense look he saw for much of the game's second period and couldn't quite figure out.

"They did a better job on him in the second half," O'Neill said. "They were more aware of him."

As he has often said this year, O'Neill said Wesley "has a chance" to be a "real, real big-time player" over the next three years.

Stat of the game: USC was out-rebounded 45-19 by Stanford, and the Cardinal grabbed 13 offensive rebounds off of 27 of their own missed shots. By contrast, the Trojans grabbed just one of the rebounds from their 33 missed shots.

The numbers are rare, and they are damning. Stanford started three players measuring in at 6-8 or higher; USC has only one available player taller than 6-6.

Quote of the game: "I think we have a chance going into any game." -- O'Neill

The Trojans' coach was asked about the feasibility of his team winning any one of its five remaining regular-season games, at UCLA on Wednesday, at the Arizona schools next week and at home against the Washington schools the week after that.

Predictably, he brought up one of his favorite lines, about how anybody wearing "short pants" can beat anybody else at basketball. It sounds nice, but it's going to be tough for USC to win any of those games -- with the Arizona State visit being the only real winnable one.

Final notes: Stanford forward Andy Brown, a product of Santa Ana Mater Dei, made his first career field goal in the first half of Sunday's game. Brown is a third-year player but tore his ACL three times over the last four years and never suited up for a college game before last month...Only two USC players made field goals in the first half of the contest, Wesley and Allen. And only five Trojans made anything from the field all game, actually: those two, plus Jones, guard Alexis Moore and forward Garrett Jackson...USC head football coach Lane Kiffin and family watched the first half from Galen Center courtside seats.

LOS ANGELES -- For most of one half of Thursday night's game against Cal, lowly USC looked like it could actually compete against the class of the Pac-12 conference.

Buoyed by superb play from sophomore point guard Maurice Jones, the Trojans actually led, 23-19, with eight minutes to go in the first half. Then the Bears went on a 16-6 run to finish off the period, and USC was soon run out of its own building. Cal ended up outscoring the Trojans 40-20 in the second half and wound up with a 75-49 victory.

"I thought we played a pretty good first half," USC coach Kevin O'Neill said afterward. "But we have to do a better job of putting together two good halves of basketball."

USC (6-19, 1-11) has rarely done that this season, winning only two games since November and putting together only three consistent games in that span -- the two victories against Utah and TCU and a close loss at Washington State earlier this month.

"It just feels like a re-run," said Jones, who led the Trojans with 17 points in 29 minutes.

Cal was led by Allen Crabbe, who had 19 points on 8-of-12 shooting. Senior forward Harper Kamp added 18 points.

Byron Wesley had 11 points for the Trojans for his third straight double-digit point game.

Player of the game: Jones had a great game, scoring his 17 points on 8-of-13 shooting and turning the ball over just once. And his numbers would likely have been better had he not missed a significant stretch of the second half because of a cut on his left hand that bled.

Plus-minuses aren't kept for NCAA games, but Jones' was clearly the best on the team. Cal took advantage every time he was out of the game, including for three-plus minutes in the first half when he picked up two fouls.

"When Mo's not in there, we don't function very well," O'Neill said. "Not that we function at a high level when he is in there. But when he's not in there, it's difficult for us.

"We're asking too much of Mo."

Said Jones of his teammates' struggles when he was out of the game: "You can't blame them. They're all new to this."

Stat of the game: USC was out-rebounded 41-28 by the Bears, and Cal got a third of the available boards when on the offensive end.

O'Neill said Cal's big men were overwhelming in that department, with USC's James Blasczyk and Garrett Jackson combining for only 12 rebounds. The Bears' David Kravish, on the other hand, had 18 on his own.

"No matter what size you have, if you don't gang rebound, you're not going to rebound well," O'Neill said. "The bottom line is, those guys are more experienced and they're better and us on the front line.

"And it showed tonight. It really did."

Quote of the game: "There was a level of frustration a long time ago." -- Jones

The 5-7 guard was asked after Thursday's game if he sensed a certain level of frustration creeping into the team's mentality following another blowout loss at the hands of a conference opponent.

His answer was quick, sharp and delivered without a hint of a smile, although it elicited laughs in those he was speaking to.

Final notes: USC's two starting forwards, Jackson and Wesley, combined to shoot 7-of-31 from the field, good for a 23-percent mark...Crabbe, a product of L.A. Price High, had a contingent of two dozen or so family members in attendance at the Galen Center (announced crowd: 3,707), who cheered wildly for every one of his eight made shots...O'Neill told the Trojans not to come into the arena at any cost on Friday, giving the players a full, no-strings-attached day off Friday before prepping for Sunday's game against Stanford on Saturday.

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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USC forward Aaron Fuller, the team's top rebounder and second-leading scorer, is done for the 2011-2012 season, he confirmed in a text message to ESPNLosAngeles.com Thursday morning.

Fuller, a junior, will undergo season-ending shoulder surgery next week to repair a torn labrum in his left (shooting) shoulder and is sitting out until then. He made the trip north this weekend for the Trojans' games at Oregon and Oregon State but will not dress and will sit on the bench.

He averaged 10.6 points and 5.9 rebounds in 18 games this season, his first with the Trojans after he transferred from Iowa in the summer of 2010. One of his best games for USC came in the December home loss to Kansas. Fuller scored in double-digits nine times, including six straight to start the season.

USC coach Kevin O'Neill couldn't say earlier this week whether or not Fuller would be available for the Oregon games. But the Trojans' third-year coach has said for quite some time that Fuller was battling serious injuries to his shoulders -- both the torn labrum in his left and a similar injury in his right.

He had not practiced of late and couldn't play in the second half of a home loss to Arizona earlier this month because of overwhelming pain. In a text message, Fuller said his surgery is scheduled for Thursday, Jan. 26.

USC plays at Oregon at 5:30 p.m. PT Thursday.

Jio Fontan tore the ACL in his left knee on August 16, 2011 and underwent surgery to reconstruct it on Sept. 13.

That means he's had about four months of proper recovery time, far less than the 6-9 months typically thrown around as a basic guideline for athletes with ACL tears.

But Fontan, the 22-year-old New Jersey native who was supposed to be the starting point guard and captain of the 2011-2012 USC Trojans as a senior, believes he's roughly six weeks ahead of schedule and nearing full recovery. He thinks he'll have a chance to return to the court in the coming weeks and help the struggling Trojans (5-13, 0-5 in the Pac-12) salvage bits and pieces out of this season.

Now, the question is whether anyone else does -- and, most importantly, Trojans coach Kevin O'Neill's opinion of the whole thing.

Once Fontan gets official approval from the team trainers to return to the court -- if he gets it, that is -- he'll have to meet with O'Neill and come up with a solution the two can agree upon: Will he play or won't he?

"I'm sure he will (beg me to play)," O'Neill told ESPNLosAngeles.com Tuesday. "But I'm not gonna do anything that would jeopardize his career in any way. Because I think the guy has a chance to be a good player and play for money somewhere.

"I'm gonna do the best thing by him first and worry about us second. I would never jeopardize a player's career for my team's quote personal gain."

That may not be the most popular approach in the world, considering the Trojans' current status in the standings. But O'Neill insists he's told the same thing to his players over and over since getting to USC in June of 2009 and will not budge from it. It's up to Fontan to convince him that playing this year would be best for him and the team.

"When I feel like I can even argue with him, then I'll do it," Fontan said this week. "Because he's definitely going to argue with me. He'll be like, 'Jio, you know, I'm not stupid. You're not gonna get past me with this.' So I have to really have my stuff together before I approach him."

So, how long does he have to approach him?

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LOS ANGELES -- A rivalry game would bring out the energy, right?

5-12 USC's chance to redeem itself a bit against crosstown UCLA would mean the Trojans would play with more focus than they had been exhibiting of late, right?

Wrong.

The Trojans played one of their worst games of the 2011-2012 season at the Galen Center on Sunday night, falling 66-47 to the rival Bruins in their sixth straight loss and ninth in their last 10 games.

"A game like that, you would think that we would come out and execute a lot better," freshman guard Alexis Moore said afterward. "Honestly, we embarrassed ourselves.

"We did a disservice to the university in our effort and how we played."

USC (5-13, 0-5 in the Pac-12) started off the game well, taking a 7-4 lead five minutes in. But UCLA (10-7, 3-2) fought back by the 12-minute mark and didn't come close to losing its lead from then on.

The Trojans shot just 36 percent from the field for the game, the sixth straight time they've shot under 40 percent. Point guard Maurice Jones had 13 points to lead them, but no other player was in double digits. UCLA had three players -- David and Travis Wear and Lazeric Jones -- with 13 points or more.

"We’re struggling to score obviously," USC coach Kevin O'Neill said. "It’s been one of our problems all year and it continues to be one of our problems."

O'Neill said he was disappointed with his team's energy on the defensive end in the first half. The Bruins shot 64 percent in the game's first 20 minutes to take a 37-19 lead into the break. The second half was more even, with UCLA outscoring USC by just one, 29-28.

Asked if he could see evidence that his Trojans are improving this season as they continue to lose games in what's now a full-fledged rebuilding year, O'Neill wasn't quite willing to say that he was.

"We are what we are," O'Neill said. "We’re pretty solid defensively, but we’re a team that struggles to score.

"We are who we are, and we obviously didn’t play well today."

Player of the game: Maurice Jones was the only USC player able to produce effectively on offense, although he again failed to shoot well. But he did finish with 13 points on 4-of-13 shooting, adding three assists while turning the ball over only once.

He hasn't had the type of numbers O'Neill indicated he would at the outset of this season, but the primary reason the Trojans are losing ballgames is not his performance. He is double-teamed with regularity as opponents realize no other player can produce his own shot.

Forward Aaron Fuller also earned praise from O'Neill postgame for playing 23 minutes and scoring eight points despite being bothered by injuries to both his shoulders. He didn't practice all week.

Stat of the game: USC was out-rebounded 44-19 by UCLA -- a margin that almost doubled the previous high this season, 13 against New Mexico on Dec. 10. The Bruins hadn't beaten a team by that much on the glass since Ben Howland's first season in 2003-2004.

It was also more rebounds than any USC opponent has posted this season, one more than the previous high by Nebraska on Nov. 14.

In a true rarity, UCLA rebounded more of its 25 missed shots than USC did, with 13 offensive rebounds to the Trojans' 11 defensive rebounds. (One went out of bounds.)

Quote of the game: "I was happy as hell to see that go in." -- O'Neill

Freshman guard Byron Wesley tried to throw an alley-oop pass with 1:25 left to go in the game, but the ball actually went directly into the basket for two points, which drew a laugh from fans still at the game.

It was one of two field goals the 6-5 Wesley scored on the night, as he finished with five points in 36 minutes.

Final notes: Announced attendance at the Galen Center was 8,474 -- the biggest crowd at the arena this season but the smallest crowd for a USC home game against UCLA since the arena opened in 2006...The jersey of former USC All-American Harold Miner was retired and raised to the rafters at halftime. Miner was also present at the game and gave a speech, thanking fans for the support. He said he hoped he gave Trojan fans "their money's worth each and every night" for the three seasons he played at USC...The 19-point margin of victory was the largest for UCLA in a game at USC since 1999

Leave it to USC Trojans coach Kevin O'Neill to call on the Bible to try to reach his team in advance of Sunday's home game against UCLA.

O'Neill, the Trojans' third-year coach finding himself under pressure to win now because of his team's disappointing 5-12 record, was conducting the final 15 minutes of a mid-week practice in preparation for UCLA and looking for a new way to practice shooting.

So he gave his struggling team a quick pep talk at mid-court of the upstairs practice courts at USC's Galen Center and spread them out for two-man shooting drills on the six available baskets.

In seconds, he realized the explanation he had given wasn't sufficient.

"Alexis!" he shouted from across the gym at freshman point guard Alexis Moore as he walked to one end of the court with Maurice Jones to complete their portion of the drill. "Have you heard of Noah's Ark?"

Moore looked at Jones, puzzled. Walk-ons near them snickered. Eyes went back and forth between O'Neill and Moore.

"Yes," the 18-year-old Moore said, unsure whether to laugh or look seriously at his head coach known to have a temper.

"What was it?" O'Neill asked, and the two exchanged responses until O'Neill grew satisfied that Moore -- and his teammates, from listening -- knew enough about it to let the drill go on.

His message: In the story of Noah's Ark described in the Bible, all the animals had to board the vessel in pairs to keep themselves safe and give each other company. O'Neill wanted his players to do the same for what has become the tough task of shooting this season.

"I wasn't sure our guys would know what Noah's Ark was," O'Neill said afterward, laughing when asked about his little lesson. "I bet if I'd asked some of them, they wouldn't have known.

"We were just trying to get into paired shooting, so I thought, Noah's Ark, they did things by pairs."

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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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