With the season winding down, the Cougars’ men’s basketball team is preparing to end the year on a high note with a road trip to southern California.

WSU (11-15, 5-9 Pac-12) is coming off of an emotional loss to its cross-state rival Washington after a last-second three-point shot washed away its dreams of a season sweep of the Huskies. However, the Cougars have no time to dwell on the past as they will turn around and play the USC Trojans just three days later. USC (10-17, 2-13) has had a difficult season thus far – they are last in the conference standings and have won just two games since the start of the calendar year.

If the Cougars have any hopes of finishing their conference season at .500 for the first time since current Golden State Warrior Klay Thompson donned the crimson and gray, they’ll have to have a short memory. Fortunately for Cougar fans, that is something Head Coach Ernie Kent thinks they can do.

“I’m not worried about it because they’re still young people and they’re a lot more resilient than we are as old coaches and everything,” Kent said. “I would expect by the time they put on that coat and tie and get on that plane and land in sunny southern California and jump off and put their feet on that soil, I would think they would have a smile on that face, tremendous energy— we need to get after USC.”

The biggest focus WSU will have heading into this road trip is to improve its play on the defensive side of the ball. The Cougars currently rank last in the conference in most of the major defensive categories, including points per game, field goal percentage, rebounding margin, steals per game, turnover margin and defending the three-pointer. Kent believes the Cougars’ biggest issue this season has been their inability to play team defense consistently.

“We need a lot of guys to improve their defense,” Kent said. “One guy is not going to shut down a team. It’s a team game on the offensive end, it’s a team game on the defensive end and really more so on the defensive end because you got to have help-side defense, got to be ready to rotate, got to be ready to block out and all that so you can literally have four guys do everything right on defense and that fifth guy who forgets to rotate or forgets to block out could cost you the possession… it’s just too much slippage right now.”

Team defense will play a pivotal role in the game against USC, as they don’t have one guy who stands out on offense. Instead, the Trojans have three players averaging around 12 points per game in sophomore forward Nikola Jovanovic, freshman guard Jordan McLaughlin and sophomore guard Katin Reinhardt. Jovanovic also leads the team with 7.1 rebounds per contest.

Fortunately for the Cougars, the Trojans will give them an opportunity to execute their defensive game plan as USC enters the game ranked last in the conference in field goal percentage and 11th in three-point shooting. Like the Cougars, the Trojans have also struggled on the defensive side of the ball, allowing their opponents to score 70.4 points per game, ranking 10th in the conference.

The key for WSU will be how well it shoots the ball against the Trojans. USC doesn’t play great defense, giving the Cougars an opportunity to use their up-tempo offense to create possessions and give them a chance to shoot themselves to victory. The Cougars enter the match-up scoring 70.7 points per game, which ranks fifth in the conference.

Senior guard DaVonté Lacy and sophomore forward Josh Hawkinson have been the most consistent scorers for the Cougars this season, averaging 17.2 and 14.5 points per game, respectively. However, the Cougars have flourished when they’ve had a third scorer putting up double digits. In recent games, sophomore guard Que Johnson and senior forward Dexter Kernich-Drew have been those guys, but more consistency from either one of them would be a big boost for the team down the stretch.

The Cougars will fight for their shot at a .500 record in both their overall season and conference play beginning at 7 p.m. tonight against USC. The game can be seen on the Pac-12 Networks.

Reporting by William Cheshier