Your USC Trojans' basketball season has been one to forget thus far, as they're currently 8-8, good for 9th in the Pac-12.
They're 2-3 in conference play with multiple bad losses, suggesting that this year may be the last for coach Andy Enfield, who has underperformed tremendously since his 2022 contract extension.
A tough seaosn thus far won't be getting any better, as the Trojans are now without star freshman guard Isaiah Collier, who is set to miss 4-6 weeks with a hand injury.
With a series of difficult conference games ahead, USC has no more than a fighting chance to escape with wins. The quality of the Pac-12 this season, combined with their own struggles even with Collier playing, highlight that USC just isn't ready to compete in their current state, and there's no real reason to assume that'll change.
The Ringer's Bill Simmons, in a segment seemingly unrelated to basketball, let alone college basketball, USC basketball, or the NBA Draft, made an off-hand remark suggesting that Isaiah Collier may have faked his hand injury. Here's the full comment from his recent episode:
"Because the way they're talking about this draft...Isaiah Collier got hurt, and we were like... did he get hurt? Because it's actually a better business move to say 'I'm hurt.'"
This was definitely an odd comment by Simmons as there's no reason to believe Collier would be exaggerating an injury to this magnitude.
That said, the angle he was taking was that because the 2024 NBA Draft class is projected to be weak, the notion that Collier could be taking time away to assure that he winds up a top pick, as opposed to risking his stock falling does make sense, but seems very unlikely.
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