Saint Mary’s flexes its muscles in rout of USC in Acrisure Invitational

A big win in the Acrisure Invitational on Thursday might not completely say which teams are and aren’t the powerhouses of West Coast basketball. But Saint Mary’s 71-36 victory over USC certainly says something about where those two teams are early in the men’s basketball season.

“I feel like we are getting better. We have a lot of new key players,” said Saint Mary’s head coach Randy Bennett after his team improved to 7-0.

Given that Saint Mary’s has been a strong team out of the West Coast Conference for years, it’s surprising that Thursday night’s game at Acrisure Arena was the first time Saint Mary’s has ever beaten USC in 11 attempts.

While Saint Mary’s showed its potential to again be an NCAA Tournament team and perhaps challenge Gonzaga for the WCC title, Thursday’s game also showed that USC remains in a rebuilding mode. A month after winning an exhibition game at Acrisure Arena against Gonzaga, the Trojans struggled in all aspects of the game, scoring just 15 second-half points and shooting just 26 percent from the field including missing all 12 of their 3-point attempts.

“Obviously, they were off,” Bennett said about the Trojans. “They didn’t hit a 3. But we had something to do with it.”

USC took a 19-18 lead with 7:25 left in the first half, but that’s when the Trojans’ shooting went ice cold. USC scored just two more points in the half and didn’t score at all in the final 4:59 of the half. By that time, Saint Mary’s had built a 32-21 halftime lead.

That lead expanded to 44-25 five minutes into the second half, with much of the damage from Saint Mary’s coming from guard Jordan Ross. Ross scored the first eight points in the half for the Gaels on his way to 15 points to lead Saint Mary’s in scoring.

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“Stuff is clicking at the right time,” said Ross, a returning sophomore for the Gaels. “We are getting better every game, getting better as we go. That’s usually how you want it to be. You don’t want to be playing your best basketball in November, December. We’ll keep getting better as the games go.”

The Gales were so dominant in the second half that their 39-point total for the 20 minutes was more than USC’s 36 points for the entire game.

USC coach Eric Musselman, who did not speak after the game, had said at the exhibition with Gonzaga that he would start the year looking to find the right combination of players with 13 new players on the USC squad. Even though the loss only dropped USC to 5-2, it was clear Musselman and the Trojans are still searching for consistency.

That isn’t a problem for Saint Mary’s with Bennett saying his team has added depth for the 2024-25 season.

“Paulius (Murauskas) is new, he’s a key player for us. Ashton (Hardaway) has become a key player for us. He’s developing some depth for us,” Bennett said. “And Mikey Lewis is a freshman who is one of our leading scorers. As they grow and figure it out, we have improved.”

Bennett also praised the tournament, the Acrisure Arena and the desert, perhaps only half joking that it seems like a nice, livable place to retire.

Following Ross, two Gaels’ Murauskas and Augusta Marciulionis each scored 11 points. Saint Mary’s shot 50.8 percent from the field and outrebounded the Trojans 46-23. USC had just one player in double figures scoring on the night, forward Josh Cohan with 12.

“We have gotten better defensively. We are good on the boards. So we have to keep playing to our strengths,” Bennett said.

But Bennett wasn’t ready to say his team was ready for conference play.

“I know after a game like that it sounds crazy, but we have a lot of room to get better,” he said. “I think in the last week and a half we’ve made some progress defensively. One of our weaknesses was defensing the 3, so we got that done tonight.”

The win moves the Gaels into Friday’s 6:30 p.m. championship game against the Arizona State Sun Devils, who survived a wild game to defeat the New Mexico Lobos 85-82 in the final game of the night at Acrisure Arena.

Arizona St. 85, New Mexico 82

After building a lead as large as 13 points in the first half, Arizona fell behind as New Mexico put together a 21-1 run, including 16-1 to end the first half and the first five points of the second half. The game remained tight the rest of the way, with New Mexico leading by as much as nine points.

Trailing 75-74, Arizona State got consecutive 3-point shots by Basheer Jihad and B.J. Freeman to take a five-point lead with under one minute to play. A Mustapha Amzil 3-pointer brought New Mexico back to a one-point deficit, and Arizona State had to survive a mid-court 3-point attempt to secure the game.

Jihad led Arizona State with 20 points, while Joson Sason added 19 for the Sun Devils, who improved to 6-1. New Mexico (5-2) was led by 30 points from Donovan Dent and 28 points from Amzil, including 17 in the first half.

New Mexico will face USC Friday at 9 p.m. in the third-place game of the invitational.

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