LOS ANGELES — At the sound of the final buzzer in Wednesday night’s game, the USC men’s basketball players embraced as they walked off the court, breathing a sigh of relief with a weight lifted off their shoulders — one step closer to sneaking into postseason play.

Once a team on the NCAA Tournament bubble, first-year head coach Eric Musselman finds his team fighting just to get into the 15-team Big Ten Tournament. It’s not where he thought his squad would be, but the Trojans have fallen hard of late, losing seven of their past eight games.

“When you’ve lost seven out of eight, it’s never easy on anybody,” Musselman said. “I’ve been through it. You can’t let this team see a flinch, and you’ve got to continue with your same preparation.”

USC (15-15 overall, 7-12 Big Ten) strengthened its hopes Wednesday with a 92-61 drubbing of last-place Washington to move into a five-way tie for 11th place in the conference standings.

Musselman’s emotions are always high, especially in a must-win environment. At times, he voiced his frustration to the referees, and other moments saw him become animated over turnovers — spinning around, falling to one knee in agony, even when the game was out of reach.

“I wear my emotion on my sleeve,” Musselman said, chuckling. “You try to coach for perfection every possession. I don’t care if we’re down 30 or up 30. ... Some of my theatrics, my wife tells me, are embarrassing, but I’m not going to probably change at my age.”

The Trojans played some of their best basketball in recent weeks against the Huskies, taking the court focused and motivated and securing their largest margin of victory this season.

“Normally, teams separate from each other, but we kept meeting,” point guard Desmond Claude said of the team pushing through its recent rough stretch. “We did a pretty solid job bouncing back. ... We had each other’s back on defense, and if we do that, I believe we could beat anybody.”

Claude had 25 points on 9-of-19 shooting and dished out 11 assists, playing a key role in the team’s crisp ball movement. Claude, who has struggled with turnovers at times this season, had just two on a night when USC had 24 assists on its 31 field goals — efficiency that drew praise from Musselman.

Claude, Chibuzo Agbo and Rashaun Agee set the pace. Agbo led all scorers with a season-high 26 points on 9-of-12 shooting (7 for 10 from 3-point range) to go with six rebounds. Agee added 18 points on 6-of-8 shooting (4 for 5 from 3-point range) and five rebounds for the Trojans, who shot 56.4% overall and a sizzling 15 for 26 from 3-point range.

Washington (13-17, 4-15) pulled within eight early in the second half before USC gradually pulled away.

The Trojans own a head-to-head tiebreaker against 16th-place Iowa (15-14, 6-12), so they would qualify for the Big Ten Tournament if they finish with the same record. All the pressure is on Iowa, which played a must-win game against No. 5 Michigan State late on Thursday night.