USC Basketball: Isaiah Collier Puts Blame on Himself, Teammates for Upset Loss to UC Irvine

The freshman showed great maturity here.

It was a frustrating evening for the USC Trojans basketball team Tuesday night as they dropped a winnable game to UC Irvine in front of the Trojans faithful at Galen Center. USC struggled offensively the entire game, and without a few key players in the lineup, they couldn’t recover.

Isaiah Collier was one of the few players who actually showed up for the game, dropping 23 points for the Trojans. He continued his hot start to his career and looked like a true number-one scoring option all night.

However, the team couldn’t use his solid game to get the win. Collier did acknowledge that the team wasn’t fully prepared leading up to the game, and he said the blame falls on the player's shoulders.

"I'll definitely say the team, we just weren't locked in," said Collier. "I think that was the players' fault, on our end. We didn't start off the game with energy, so we'll take the blame."

Per Isaiah Collier via TrojanSports.com

This is huge for a freshman like Collier, and it speaks to his maturity as a player. But even he was banged up heading into the game with head coach Andy Enfield saying that he missed multiple practices due to injury.

"Isaiah Collier practiced basically half a practice yesterday and was out three days with his injury," Enfield said. "He was able to play tonight but without Kobe and Boogie. This week of practice leading up to the game was not good, and we didn't play any better today. We deserved to lose this game by the way we played, offensively especially. You can't shoot 28 percent, have 7 assists and 16 turnovers."

Per Andy Enfield via TrojanSports.com

USC looked out of sync the entire night, and the final score showed it all. They can take this game and learn from it going forward, and hopefully, they come in better prepared for future matchups.

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