For the first 14 minutes of basketball, everything was going smoothly for Arizona State (6-11, 2-5 Pac-12) against No. 15 USC (17-2, 7-2 Pac-12) at Galen Center in Los Angeles. Despite missing their head coach Bobby Hurley and sophomore guard Jay Heath due to suspensions following their confrontation with an official against Stanford on Saturday and graduate forward Kimani Lawrence due to a non-COVID illness, ASU looked to be battling against the odds. However, the Sun Devils were unable to hold off a Trojan surge late in the first half, one which they would never look back from, as they fell on the road to USC 78-56.

Arizona State looked tremendous to start the contest. Sophomore guard DJ Horne came out of the gates hot, scoring the first five Sun Devil points with a close two and a strike from three-point range. Graduate student Marreon Jackson had a hot hand as well, as he scored 11 of the next 13 Sun Devil points from distance and up close. Junior forward Jalen Graham added several buckets to help the Sun Devils jump out to a 12-point lead.

The defense was equally as impressive in the first portion of the game. A tight, stifling ASU effort guarding the basket and the perimeter held the Trojans to 3-for-16 shooting, while the pressure caused them to cough up the ball eight times.

Arizona State led 22-10 with six minutes and 19 seconds left in the first half. It would be the last time the Sun Devils held the lead in Los Angeles on Monday.

USC junior forward Isaiah Mobley and freshman guard Reese Dixon-Waters grabbed the shovel for the Trojans and got to digging away at the Sun Devil lead. With just under six minutes, Dixon-Waters struck from distance. The Sun Devils missed on their next possession. Mobley then cashed a three-pointer. Arizona State, operating under the co-leadership of assistant coaches Joel Justus and Jermaine Kimbrough, opted to call timeout.

Out of the break, the Sun Devils missed another shot, only for Dixon-Waters to strike again from three on the other end. The run stretched to 12 straight USC points with another three from Mobley. Then junior guard Boogie Ellis and senior guard Drew Peterson added two-pointers of their own, stretching the run to 16-0 as USC took the lead.

A jumper from Graham would be the only basket ASU scored in the final six minutes of the half, as USC embarked on a 21-2 run to snatch back the lead, finishing the first 20 minutes ahead by seven.

Horne and Jackson refused to let the Sun Devils go down easily in the early moments of the second half, as Horne scored eight points, making three of his first four shots of the half. Jackson followed suit, sinking a three four minutes into the period.

With just seven scholarship players available for the Sun Devils, their early attempt to cut into the USC lead was valiant but unsuccessful. The team’s poor shooting marks began to emerge; the defense made mistakes, fouls began to mount, and the overall size of their opponent began to suck the life out of the ASU squad as a whole.

Junior forward Alonzo Gaffney acquired four fouls with 10 minutes to play, leaving Graham and freshman center Enoch Boakye to fend for themselves against the towering USC bigs. Several hard hits to the face ended Gaffney’s night in Los Angeles.

Just four players from Arizona State managed to find the basket on Monday, with three of them finishing in double figures. Horne, Jackson, and Graham took the lion share of the offensive effort, with redshirt junior Luther Muhammad adding a late two-point jumper and a successfully converted three-point play just before the final buzzer.

Jackson led all scorers with 21, a season-high for the Toledo transfer. He added three rebounds, an assist, and a steal to the scorecard. Horne finished with 14 points, a rebound, two assists, and a season-high three steals. Graham scored 15 points, just shy of his career-high on 50 percent shooting. He supplemented his offensive performance with seven rebounds – three on the offensive glass – two assists, and three steals.

In 26 minutes, USC scored 68 points, while Arizona State could only muster 34 – exactly half of the USC offensive explosion. The size of the Trojans also gashed the Sun Devils on the boards, as SC grabbed 49 rebounds to ASU’s 24, just over twice as many.

ASU’s 56 points on Monday night was their third-worst scoring performance of the season, only bested by the offensive meltdowns against Cal in January and Washington State in December.

Next up for the Sun Devils is a visit to the city down south to face the No. 3 Arizona Wildcats in Tucson for a Saturday 12:30 p.m. showdown.