USC 61 - ASU 49: Box Score of the Day

CHN now features a live scoreboard, stats, standings, etc.. here. Occasionally, we'll be featuring a box score of the day, with some commentary on why the box score is interesting. It might be involve a huge upset, a big personal effort, some odd statistical occurrences, or other intriguing tidbit.

Box Score of the Day:

Today's pick is.. USC's 61-49 Win Over Arizona St.

ESPN's headline called this a "shocker", but their writers overuse that phrase 30 times a day. In reality, this was a nice little upset, but nothing terribly out of the norm. There were however two major performances from big name players that stood out. Potential Top 5 pick James Harden had easily the worst game of his career with 4 points on 0-8 shooting. This type of output is unheard of from one of the game's most consistent and efficient performers. As this game was too late for my East Coast tastes, I don't know if Harden was just off or Tim Floyd pulled out one of his usual special schemes to shut him down. If you have the answer, let me know.

And then you had an actual sighting from USC uber-freshman DeMar DeRozan. DeRozan was supposed to join Harden at the top of the NBA Draft, but has had a rather ho hum rookie season with averages of 12 ppg and 5 rpg. But the heralded athlete came through with 22 points (his first 20+ game), 8 boards, and 3 steals (a new high), got to the line 7 times (another new high), and even hit his first career 3-pointer.