Eric Musselman can't hide frustration with officiating as USC's season ends
USC basketball coach Eric Musselman is a wears-his-heart-on-his-sleeve kind of guy at all times. There's never any ambiguity as to what Musselman feels about his team or the outcome of a game.
Or, as was the case Thursday night, the officiating ...
It wasn't just the final moments of USC's 76-71 loss to Purdue in the Big Ten tournament in Indianapolis that had Musselman unnerved, but that's where his frustration became uncontainable.
First, to set the scene ...
Desmond Claude hit a jumper from the foul line to tie the game at 71-71 with 54.5 seconds remaining -- as he scored USC's final 10 points of the game after missing significant time while picking up his fourth foul of the game early in the second half.
With 28.3 seconds left, Purdue's Camden Heide saved a ball from going out of bounds by throwing it off the bottom of the backboard and then off USC's Rashaun Agee and back out of bounds, giving the Boilermakers possession. Musselman and the Trojans seemed to contend that the ball hit the back corner of the backboard -- not just the bottom.
More to the point, however, was that Purdue had just 3.8 seconds left on the play clock as it then reset for an inbounds. As the ball was lobbed into the paint to Trey Kaufman-Renn, Agee was immediately whistled for a foul for contact on the inbounds. Musselman was apoplectic on the sideline on what seemed like very minor or incidental contact. Of course, Kaufman-Renn hit both free throws to give Purdue a 73-71 lead.
Claude missed a pull-up jumper at the other end, so USC fouled Kaufman-Renn with 13.8 on the clock and this time he hit just one of two free throws, leading it a one-possession game at 74-71 and one final chance for the Trojans.
Claude brought the ball up and dished it to Wesley Yates III coming off a screen around the right wing, but he slipped and fell as the ball was on the way to him. It looked like Purdue's Braden Smith had contact into Yates' back before the fall, but no call was made. Instead, Smith recovered the lose ball with 3.8 seconds left and was sent to the line to seal the game.
So Musselman opened his postgame comments like this ...
"I want to give Purdue credit tonight, but I've been doing this for a long time. The amount of text messages I got from a NBA head coach and a NBA GM," he said before stopping himself short of outright saying it was about the officiating. "That was tough for us. I thought our team did everything we could to put ourselves in position to win the game. I feel for the locker room. This group came here to win the tournament, and I thought we put ourselves in position tonight to play one more day tomorrow. But I get it -- great fan base tonight and they'll have a great fan base tomorrow. Just unfortunate that we couldn't pull out a victory."
Musselman's veiled point being that Purdue, the tournament's No. 6 seed, of course, is a local team from the state of Indiana playing nearby at Gainbridge Fieldhouse this week.
He also had thoughts on Claude's rare foul trouble, which limited him to just 21 minutes Thursday night.
"I didn't know that Desman was so physical. But he was tonight, I guess," Musselman. "The game's on tape so anybody can watch it. It doesn't do me any good to sit up here and get fined. The game's reviewable for anybody who wants to. When [Agee] dug down in the post, that's as clean as can be. So look, I gotta go face a locker room that their season's over, and I thought the game plan, even with guys in foul trouble, I thought we could have won the game. But we didn't."
He wasn't done, though.
Musselman was asked a broad question about Yates' development this season and what he meant to the team, but the coach's thoughts couldn't stray from the ending of the game.
"I just hope its recognized that we played a double-overtime game last night, that we're three hours difference from home on our body clocks, that we got back to our hotel and the first time we got to utter the words Purdue were about 1 a.m. ... This is probably the most difficult game I've ever lost with a team and I've been coaching a really, really long time," he said. "Again, I thought we played well enough to win the game, even with foul trouble.
"Baseline out of bounds, 3 seconds on the shot clock , we got to defend without fouling there, I guess. And Wes has to hold his ground if there's body contact when he comes off a play that we diagram for him."
Musselman still wasn't finished venting, answering another question about the final moments ...
"I saw what everybody saw. My daughter's at home, she watched it on TV, she's a freshman in high school. My mom's at home in San Diego watching it. All you got to do is go on Twitter," he said. "Look, we played well enough to win. That's all I can say. Give Purdue credit. We're new, we got to earn respect."
It was indeed a tough finish for the No. 14-seeded Trojans, who showed a lot of fight this week in Indianapolis while opening with a double-overtime win Wednesday over Rutgers but now end Musselman's first season at the helm with a losing 16-17 record.
Claude scored a team-high 18 points, including that flurry at the end for the Trojans. Yates finished with 13 points while Agee and key reserve Matt Knowling (5 of 5 from the floor) added 11 each.
"It was a little tough, but I just wanted to stay ready, be supportive of my teammates, give feedback of what I could see from the bench," Claude said of his predicament. "... I don't control what the refs call, even if I don't agree with it."
That was the overarching consensus from the Trojans as their season ended with a gut punch Thursday.
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