Trojans need to figure out which way is up

BERKELEY —  From the team hotel this afternoon, USC will take Highway 101 north toward San Francisco before crossing the Bay Bridge and heading north on Interstate 580 on the way to Haas Pavilion.

But the question remains: Where do the Trojans go from here?

Do they fold the way they did last season, when they also were 15-6 before losing seven of their last nine games? Or do they bounce back from a 15-point drubbing by Stanford -- their most one-sided defeat of the season -- to revive talk of an NCAA tournament berth?

“If we come up here and lose two games, that could really hurt our chances,” junior swingman Nick Young said Friday. “We’ll be at the bottom again, so we know this is going to be a big game for us. We know we have to get a win.”

For No. 25 USC, the road to possible redemption runs through an equally wounded California team coming off a 62-46 loss Thursday to third-ranked UCLA. The Golden Bears could draw confidence from victories over Stanford and Kansas State, teams that handed the Trojans their worst losses of the season.

“We have a very challenging assignment here, a team that beat Stanford at Stanford and a team that is coming off a loss,” USC Coach Tim Floyd said of Cal. “You recognize that a split would be very good given the quality of these teams.”

With four home games remaining, USC is hoping to rekindle its ability to quickly recover from disheartening losses; the Trojans toppled then-unbeaten Oregon after suffering a last-second loss to Washington State and also defeated Arizona after falling in the final seconds to UCLA.

“We knew it was going to be a tough road trip,” Young said. “We came up here to get one [victory], get a split. We know we’ve got to get one.”

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Floyd said he benched starting center Abdoulaye N’diaye less than two minutes into USC’s 65-50 loss to Stanford because “I just didn’t like how he got started offensively [with] screening.” N’diaye had only two points and two rebounds in four minutes.

Sophomore forwards Keith Wilkinson and RouSean Cromwell, N’diaye’s replacements, fared no better, combining for zero points and two rebounds in 16 minutes while being pushed around by Stanford freshman centers Brook and Robin Lopez. Brook Lopez’s school-record 12 blocks against the Trojans were one fewer than the 13 he had recorded in his first 12 games.

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USC has discontinued its student lottery system in the wake of low turnout at the Galen Center, even for games in which all 2,000 seats were claimed. “The lottery winners were picked and went through the process but weren’t coming to the games. I’m not sure why,” senior associate athletic director Steve Lopes said. Students who hold spirit cards can now gain entrance to home games on a first-come, first-served basis.... The Trojans’ home games against Oregon and Cal are sold out, Lopes said.

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TODAY

at California, 3 p.m.

Site -- Haas Pavilion, Berkeley.

Radio -- 710.

Records -- USC, 15-6 overall, 5-3 in the Pacific 10 Conference; Cal, 12-8, 4-4.

Update -- Floyd says Cal’s Ryan Anderson is “the best three-point-shooting big guy in the country.” Anderson, a 6-foot-9 forward, is averaging 17.1 points, 8.8 rebounds and shooting 38.7% from beyond the three-point arc. Floyd said he was concerned that Golden Bears senior guard Ayinde Ubaka could be poised for a big game after going scoreless against UCLA.

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