USC got 39 points from Rodney Rice and Alijah Arenas in its first exhibition. That should be an encouraging number for a team asking those guards to lead its offense. The rest of the October 9 box score makes the next question harder: USC's bench scored five points in an 88-70 loss to North Carolina.
Rice scored 22, with five assists, and Arenas added 17, according to USC's game report. Darius Ratliff supplied 13 more. Those three accounted for 52 of the Trojans' 70 points. One exhibition cannot establish the seasonlong bench output. In this game, the scoring came mostly from three players.
The second half sharpened the question
USC led 39-37 at halftime, then scored 31 points after the break. North Carolina's account says it forced the Trojans to miss 15 of their first 20 second-half shots. A 12-0 run included seven USC turnovers in less than five minutes and nearly six minutes without a Trojan point. That sequence is a more useful warning than the final margin alone. USC did not find enough offense to interrupt the run.
The Trojans did create opportunities on defense. USC forced 18 North Carolina turnovers and scored 24 points from them, according to the official box score. The problem was keeping the offense moving through Carolina's long scoreless stretch. The same box score has USC with 22 points in the paint and a 47-33 rebounding deficit. Those numbers do not choose a lineup for Eric Musselman. They help explain why guard scoring alone did not hold the lead.
USC is No. 17 in ESPN's preseason Top 25. Its next exhibition is at UC San Diego on October 17. That game offers an early chance to see whether scoring comes from more than the starting trio and whether USC can keep creating shots when an opponent forces a rough stretch.
