I have been a Trojan Basketball Fan first since 1970 which included coaches Bob Boyd, Stan Morrison, George Raveling, Charlie Parker, Henry Bibby, Jim Saia, Tim Floyd and Kevin O'Neil. This year the team hit Rock Bottom 6-25 is the most losses in season since USC has played the game. During the Boyd years you can argue that they had some of the best teams, since one year they only had 2 losses and ranked #2 and didn't get to the NCAA's. If you didn't win your conference no matter what your record or ranking you couldn't go to the playoffs, the field was 22-25 teams up onto 1974 and 32 till 78.
Bob Boyd made the NCAA field his last year as coach with 20-9 record and won in the first round then lost the next, that team finish 2nd in the pac-10. Stan Morrison made the field in 1982 and 1985 19-9 and 19-10 records and a first place conference tie in 1985, but both lost in the first round. The recruiting class was looking up in 1985 with 4 HS all american and 3 McDonald's All stars. in Tom Lewis, Hank Gathers, Bo Kimble and Rich Grande. I thought with this class that USC was on it's way, but they had a bad season and coach Morrison was let go. Well that was a mistake since the freshman really liked him he even taught Hank to become a better free throw shooter by having switch to his left hand. The freshman thought they should be able to contribute in the coaching search, but they didn't have a word so Kimble, Gathers went to LMU and Lewis to Pepperdine losing 80% of scoring and USC starting over.
Rav was great right away he got started teaching rebounding, defense and an attitude of giving it all. He brought in a few good players in Robert Pack, Harold Miner, Duane Cooper, Stais Boseman, Jacque Hill and Rodney Chapman. The trojans made the tournament 91 & 92 and did well against UCLA. He had it going at USC and all looked great then one day on the way to early season practice Rav gets into a really bad car accident and can't coach that year, He retires and we get Charlie Parker his assistant for two years, as he goes 21-28 he gets fired and Henry Bibby takes over in mid season. Bibby would spend no time in getting to the tournament with a 2nd place pac-10 finish his first season and also in 2001 & 2002, losing in the final 8 to Duke by 10. Two years later Bibby would be gone after countless problems with Mike Garrett, MG would go into the locker room at halftime and try to coach the team.
Then came Tim Floyd (only after Rick Majarus signed then resign) things started looking up again, I remember going to the first game of the season against CSUN a close loss. The team looked good they seem to be very organized and we had this 5-9 guard from Louisiana Ryan Francis, this cat was great the team going in the right direction. Then the poor kid goes home gets caught in the wrong place gets shot and dies, but even with that set back coach floyd still does well. Then in 2007 the team is fantastic makes a run behind Nick Young, Gabe Pruit, Daniel Hackett and L
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