Trojans Get Chance to Correct Early Issues

MORAGA, Calif. — The hurt of choking away a seven-point lead with less than a minute to play and losing in overtime to Nevada Las Vegas on Wednesday is still bothering Errick Craven.

But it’s nothing, the USC junior shooting guard said, that won’t be soothed with a better ending tonight at St. Mary’s.

“That loss made us realize that we really do need to play, we do need to step up and we do need to win games,” Craven said. “We can’t just go out there and hope that something miraculous happens. We have to do it ourselves.”

It’s a message Coach Henry Bibby tried to impart in a meeting with Trojan juniors Craven, his twin brother Derrick, forward Nick Curtis and center Rory O’Neil before the team traveled to the Bay Area.

“Those guys are the heart and soul of this basketball team,” Bibby said. “I need those guys to stay focused because they’re the glue to the team. When they go and they play with intensity then the whole team does.”

Bibby also said that he’d called several players on the telephone the night of the UNLV meltdown to lift their spirits.

“I’m letting them know that there are life lessons in this,” he said. “It’s not always [about] winning the basketball game. Everyone sits and says, ‘Let’s go win the championship.’ Well, let’s help them with some life skills. And eventually, you’ll win the games that you’re supposed to win.

“I have to let them know that I’m human, that I do know what it feels like when you don’t play well and you don’t seem [to] have a handle on what’s going on.”

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There was more fallout from the UNLV collapse.

Bibby and the team’s guards acknowledged that the backcourt needed to get the ball into the post more often, especially with O’Neil getting 13 points in the first half, but only two points thereafter, and power forward Jeff McMillan’s breakout game of 20 points and 11 rebounds.

“I’m just now realizing how big of a force he is down there,” Errick Craven said of McMillan. “He can be the next Sam [Clancy] and we can run the offense through him.

“The high-low is a post-man offense that we can’t run with just our guards. We might as well not fight it because now we have a big presence in there. We can work from the inside out and that would give us [guards] open looks because he’s unselfish down there.”

Said McMillan, “We’ve just got to come back and work twice as hard so we make sure things like [blowing a lead] don’t happen in the future. Basically, it’s the same thing that happened last year.... We’ve got more experience, but we’ve got to learn how to pull games like that out.”

USC’s 92-83 loss to UNLV was the Trojans’ fourth consecutive overtime setback, but it was their first nonconference defeat at the Sports Arena since Dec. 30, 1997, when they dropped a 74-70 decision to Tennessee. USC had won 24 straight nonconference games at the Sports Arena since then.

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TONIGHT

at St. Mary’s, 7

Site -- McKeon Pavilion.

Radio -- KMPC (1540), KSPA (1510), XEMM (800).

Records -- USC 1-2, St. Mary’s 4-2.

Update -- The Trojans are unbeaten in five games against St. Mary’s, though the schools last met in 1975. The Gaels are led by sophomore Daniel Kickert, a 6-foot-10, 250-pound forward from Australia who is averaging 14.5 points and six rebounds.

-- Paul Gutierrez