a Trojans crosstown comeback vanished with it, Cronin and Mack and UCLA (15-6, 6-4 Big Ten) putting away an upstart USC squad 82-76 in first-year head coach Musselman’s first taste of the Los Angeles rivalry.

Mack finished with 14 points on 4-of-7 shooting for UCLA, winners of its last four games. Forward Eric Dailey Jr. added 16 timely points to lead the Bruins, while USC backup big Rashaun Agee led the Trojans with 21.

In the summer, a couple short months into the process of figuring out where exactly his puzzle-piece roster fit, Musselman admitted in one of his first media availabilities that USC was “probably a little thin” at both point guard and center. His floor general was 6-foot-6 Desmond Claude, who’d mainly played a combo-guard role in a previous stop at Xavier. His center was 6-10 Josh Cohen, a few inches shorter than most of the behemoth bigs in the Big Ten.

Seven months later, Cronin brought a scythe of a gameplan into the Galen Center, a veteran coach and a veteran program slashing away at the weaknesses in USC’s roster makeup. Not a few minutes in, and pesky Bruins guard Skyy Clark was picking up Claude full-court, as Cronin flapped his wings in motioning for UCLA defenders to trap Claude and limit the airspace of any ball handler near the top of the key.

For stretches in the first half, it played to perfection, turnover-prone but top-scorer Claude limited to just three points as his driving lanes were smothered. After a rim-running layup from UCLA’s William Kyle III, USC’s Yates caught a pass deep in the corner and disappeared into a trap of baby-blue Bruins jerseys, stepping out bounds; after a pass the next possession slipped through wing Chibuzo Agbo Jr.’s hands, USC had six early turnovers within the first 11 minutes.

USC hung around, for the rest of the first half, despite not holding a single lead since 17 minutes in. Cronin’s pressure left wide-open gaps for shooters in the corners and at the top of the key, and a variety of Trojans snipers took aim. Yates, who finished with 19 points in continuing to assert himself as a future cornerstone of Musselman’s program, knocked down a couple triples from the corner. Forward Saint Thomas, perhaps the only person on the hardwood Monday night buzzing with more fire than Cronin, nailed a couple more from the top of the key and let anyone within shouting distance know about it.

The Trojans, though, went into the half down five, thanks to a bevy of too-easy drives to the rim in a UCLA first-half shooting a baffling 68% from the floor.