with a couple of dazzling and-one finishes. Point guard Desmond Claude continued a steady scoring stretch, also finishing with 19. 6-8 Patton Jr. was a catalyst of effective small-ball lineups, finishing with 14 points and a couple of blocks.

A layup by Patton Jr., a 3-pointer by Chibuzo Agbo and a free throw by Claude, and USC suddenly sat down just 73-71 with 3:23 left. But Claude was whistled for a devastating fifth foul on the next possession, USC’s offense going cold.

And Wolf, a player Musselman called a “flat-out” NBA talent, simply put the Trojans away, zipping a pass inside to Goldin and then dropping in a layup of his own with a little more than a minute left for a 10-point lead.

Musselman tossed a hand in dismissal at one of the referees after the buzzer, USC playing much of the second half in foul trouble, with Yates III and Agbo each sitting on four fouls.

“It’s not worth talking about, to be honest,” Musselman said, asked if there was frustration with the referees, “because there was a stretch there, that — we were not trying to foul. Like, we were trying to be super disciplined, and they went to the foul line when we were way more aggressive early in the game and there wasn’t fouls.”

But it was what it was, Musselman added. There wasn’t an excuse. Michigan won. And they won on the back of Wolf, who finished with 21 points, 13 rebounds and 7 assists.

USC contained Goldin well enough, with just two first-half points and 11 on the night. But his frontcourt partner simply took over in the second half, the Wolverines building that 15-point lead on the back of four Wolf layups in the first 4 minutes after the break, as Michigan played Cohen off the floor.

Patton Jr. fought admirably in the second half, and Agbo and Thomas all bumped above their heights with Wolf and Goldin. It wasn’t a surprise, as Musselman remarked, that his Trojans (9-5, 1-2 Big Ten) hadn’t gotten “killed” throughout the season by opposing bigs, his teams in his tenure at Nevada and Arkansas built on their ability to play small-ball.

But USC’s head coach also lamented the injury absences of 6-6 Matt Knowling and 6-7 Terrance Williams II, both forwards integral to the Trojans’ ability to switch, pointing to a clear need for differing roster construction in years to come.

“I mean, we don’t want to play every year without a true center,” Musselman said.

This was mostly the hand he was dealt, Musselman constructing his roster in haste from pieces still floating in the transfer portal after his hire in the spring. But Wolf and Goldin were both transfers, too, committing to play for first-year Wolverines coach Dusty May in late April. And small-ball, simply, wasn’t enough on Saturday.