USC Basketball: How Trojans Guard Bounced Back From Injury To Propel Road Upset Vs UCLA

Thank goodness he did!

Fifth-year USC Trojans senior guard Boogie Ellis scored a scant eight points in the club's brutal 65-50 home loss against their crosstown Pac-12 inter-conference nemeses, the UCLA Bruins, last month in a moment that seemed to put the nail in the coffin of their season.

The tables were turned yesterday, however, when Ellis scored a team-leading 24 points and grabbing a team-high five boards to power the club to an upset 62-56 win at Pauley Pavilion, Ellis' first in that hallowed hall.

Per Thuc Nhi Nguyen of The Los Angeles Times, Ellis was humble in victory.

“Just using all these games to get us ready for the Pac-12 tournament. We know we have to win out there,” Ellis said of his team's effort.

That January contest was his first since a hamstring issue kept him shelved for three games, and he wasn't his normal frenetic self in his first few bouts back.

Head coach Andy Enfield joked that the 6'2" guard “looked like older than me trying to play” in those games.

“He had no explosiveness,” Enfield said. “He had no change in speed, no change in directions.”

Ellis scored 30 points against Colorado recently, and finally looked more or less like himself in so doing.

“It was getting very frustrating for me, but I just stuck with it,” Ellis said of playing through the injury. “There are a lot of slow players in the NBA, so you don’t have to be fast to beat people off the dribble. So [it’s about] just having an impact, doing other things.”

The victory Saturday improved USC's season record to a still-bad 11-16 (5-11 in the Pac-12 conference), while dropping UCLA to 14-13 on the year (9-7 in the Pac-12).