USC’s Boogie Ellis drains career-high 8 3-pointers in rout of Eastern Washington

LOS ANGELES — In a different life, Boogie Ellis wouldn’t be here, still.

The consensus, after a year in which he’d already chosen to come back to USC, seemed that he would declare for a draft stage come the summer, even without many first-round projectables. Perhaps he’d snag a spot on an NBA bench as a second-rounder, or fill it up in the G-League; but in any case, his days at the Galen Center seemed through.

But the league, he felt, would always be there. He still had a year of eligibility to “fine-tune” his game, as he put it in September. And lo and behold, shouts of “Boogie!” have echoed back through the Galen Center in this his senior senior year.

And goodness, where would this USC team (5-2) be without him?

To watch Ellis now is to see a guard who has wrung nearly every drop out of the college basketball experience, who has willingly shouldered the load as the Trojans’ top scorer and only added to his game year-by-year, who fires off every catch-and-shoot 3-point attempt as if he’s premeditated it will fall. In the first half of a 106-78 blowout win against Eastern Washington on Wednesday night, he dribbled off a pick, hesitating at the 3-point line, then simply ignored a hand in his face and quick-triggered a 3-pointer that scorched the net.

“He’s one of the greatest shooters I’ve ever coached,” head coach Andy Enfield said, “and I was in the NBA before college, so that says a lot.”

It was his third 3-pointer of the first few minutes and an early nod to incendiary confidence. Ellis finished with 28 points and made a career-high eight 3-pointers against the Eagles, his trademark full-bore eyes-crinkle grin nowhere to be found, an assassin altogether unfazed.

“I came back to win,” Ellis said in September. “And this year, we have a chance to take USC to where it hasn’t been.”

He has lifted all ships when the tide’s gone flat at times in an up-and-down start, averaging 21.5 points per game. But to go where no Trojan has gone before – an NCAA title game, presumably – the upside Enfield has preached in this group needs to be realized, a group of playmakers and athletic big men who had not quite found offensive consistency through their first six games. They lost to UC Irvine, slogged to a win against Brown and dropped a nailbiter to Oklahoma, led by a freshman point guard in Isaiah Collier who has looked like a runaway tornado that sometimes destroys his own team’s possessions in the process.

“Our freshmen,” Enfield said Wednesday, “have to start playing like sophomores.”

Collier looked more like a veteran against Eastern Washington, orchestrating on the perimeter and finding open shooters, turning it on in the second half to tally a clean 15 points on 5-of-8 shooting. He racked up six assists against just two turnovers, and the floodgates opened early and often for USC’s offense as a slew of dribble-handoffs created easy motion. Wing Kobe Johnson finished with seven assists, dumping off beautiful back-to-back pocket passes in the first half to Kijani Wright and Vincent Iwuchukwu, the latter forcing a timeout with a thunderous dunk and roaring flex.

Iwuchukwu looked spry on the glass and around the rim in finishing with a season-high 13 points, a strong sign for an X-factor in the Trojans’ rotation. Wright finished with 12 points, a strong showing from USC’s backup bigs.

Former UCLA player Jake Kyman (Santa Margarita High) had 25 points, including seven 3-pointers, to pace the Eagles (1-6).

The last time Johnson was at a postgame microphone with Ellis, after USC’s victory over Brown, the wing didn’t hold back: “He’s that mother(expletive),” Johnson said of Ellis. He wasn’t going to repeat that, Johnson smiled Wednesday night.

“But he’s still that,” Johnson added.

Seeing Ellis put in the work to grow, across three years at USC, was the kind of thing that made you want to be a part of the program, Johnson said postgame. And the super-senior guard is the pillar, now, for a team trying to claw its way back to national relevancy.

“We just gotta make sure that we’re prepared for March,” Ellis said. “That’s the biggest thing. We’re trying to be prepared for March.”