No. 13 UCLA defeated No. 23 USC Friday night to advance to the Pac-12 tournament final, which was their second win in a week over their rival. However, head coach Mick Cronin still had high praise for the Trojans and thinks USC’s projected seed for the NCAA tournament is too low.
“Defensively, I thought that’s as good as we’ve played in awhile, especially in the first half,” Cronin said, via Brad Crawford of 247Sports. “Obviously, I’ve got tremendous respect for Coach [Andy] Enfield and their program. Their projected seed is ridiculously low. That’s typical West Coast bias. I wish them all the best next week and hopefully we can all do what we did last year.”
On the season, USC went 26–7 and 14–6 in conference, but four of those losses came to either No. 2 Arizona or UCLA. The Trojans had a stronger resume over a week ago, but suffered three losses since then: two to the Bruins and one to the Wildcats.
