USC Students React To Enfield Hire

With the new paywall being enforced starting today over at the Orange County Register, I think it's a good time to point out that the only sources of Trojans news other than this site that are completely free are coming from student-driven websites! Daily Trojan, Neon Tommy, ATVN, Reign of Troy REPRESENT!

Since Paragon has already brought the perspective from the gritty, world-weary veterans of sportswriting, here's some takes from the up-and-comers typing away in the halls of Annenberg.

Galen Central's Jacob Freedman on Rivals:

What USC basketball needed most in this hire is what it got: a rebranding. The trudging, half-court pace of Kevin O'Neill brought modest attention to the program when it worked, and turned the Galen Center into a ghost town when it unraveled. Enfield will do the opposite. He'll be the star. The first season will bring intrigued Trojan fans out of hibernation to watch his "Dunk City" brand. After that, his charisma and smarts should allow him to use his vastly widened resources to recruit the right talent and skill sets into his system.

David Tobia at Neon Tommy:

As for the ignorant notion that Enfield is inexperienced and was hired solely because of two NCAA tournament wins: sure, without Florida Gulf Coast’s unlikely run, there’s no chance USC would have even heard of Enfield. But that doesn’t make it a bad hire. Enfield has four years of NBA coaching experience with the Milwaukee Bucks and Boston Celtics and served as an assistant coach at Florida State before landing the Florida Gulf Coast job. The fact that no one had heard of Enfield before the NCAA tournament doesn’t mean he’s unqualified or a bad coach – it just means no one had heard of him. Now people have so he gets hired. Simple as that.

And here's the article written by yours truly for CollegeSpun:

At the very least, this hire will give the basketball program a publicity jolt. At the time this article was being written, USC was the top trending topic on Twitter and the top story on SportsCenter, something that is usually reserved for the football team. Enfield will also have the advantage of lower expectations. USC has the lowest winning percentage of any Pac-12 team in the last two years, and it would be safe to assume that many SC fans will be satisfied with a team that can be a contender in a parity-filled conference and earn a spot in the NCAA Tournament. The same can’t be said for the other big coaching hire in Los Angeles this week, Steve Alford. He will be coaching a UCLA program that just fired a coach who was just one win away from an outright Pac-12 championship and whose fans demand nothing less than Final Four-contending teams.

More student work to be posted as I get it.

FIGHT ON, ANNENBERG!