A Star is Born: Maurice Jones, (and some roster thoughts)

Bumped - JK

It was really too bad that tonight's match-up between USC and Santa Clara was not televised because anyone not listening in on radio or watching the stream at usctrojans.com missed out on a truly spectacular performance by our freshman point guard in the 86-73 Trojan victory. All night MoJo carved up the defense and got to the basket basically at will en route to a 29 point, 5 assist performance. The Michigan native also hit two very deep three pointers and 2 or 3 of his assists coming off of deep dribble penetration resulted in easy baskets for Kid Euro (who finished with 22 points and 11 boards). And before I get too far a big time hat tip to the other freshman Jones, recording 15 points for the gme, who shot 60% (3 of 5) from the perimeter and looked solid on defense. Both of these freshman are the real deal, and I'm pretty certain SC has found the starting PG for the next 4 years.

Roster musings after the jump.

Looking at things as they stand it is pretty clear what the rotation will look like once Jio Fontan is eligible. During tonight's game M. Jones, Vucevic, and Stepheson all played the full 40 while B. Jones played 38. Marcus Simmons would have likely seen more than the 16 minutes he played but some careless fouls saw him ride the bench. Seeing that Curtis Washington has not seen an iota of playing time I wouldn't be surprised to see O'Neill red shirt him and simply employ small ball if either of our primary bigs get in foul trouble with either Simmons, Evan Smith (if he ever gets over his perpetual shoulder, no that is not a typo), or frosh Garrett Jackson sliding down to the 4. I'll have to check back at the Kansas game, but here's what I think we'll see during conference play

PG: M Jones

SG: Fontan

SF: B Jones

PF: Vucevic

C: Stepheson

6th: Simmons