Ten minutes before USC tipped off against Texas last March in an NCAA tournament second-round game, Trojans Coach Tim Floyd approached Daniel Hackett in the locker room.
The freshman guard was starting that day, his coach told him, and his defensive assignment was Longhorns freshman Kevin Durant. It was an unlikely pairing -- a part-time starter going up against the national player of the year.
"I had nothing to be nervous about," Hackett recalled. "I was a freshman. I had nothing to lose."
With the 6-foot-5 Hackett and 6-5 teammate Dwight Lewis continually flustering the 6-9 Durant by staying underneath him and limiting his touches, USC upset Texas, 87-68, and advanced to its first Sweet 16 in six years.
Effective defensive schemes have become the norm since Floyd and assistant Phil Johnson came to USC three years ago, be it the triangle-and-two set the Trojans used in victories over UCLA and Arizona this season, the full-court press they unveiled during a win over Stanford this month or the stifling man-to-man format that is the hallmark of Floyd's teams.
Sometimes the coaches immediately conceptualize how they want to attack an opponent's strengths. Other times it comes to them while watching tape in the early hours of the morning or walking through plays with their team in a hotel ballroom.
"We have tried to play at times the 60-by-two rule, which means trying to take the other teams' two best players out of the game," Johnson said.
That rule will certainly be in effect Thursday in Omaha when sixth-seeded USC (21-11) plays 11th-seeded Kansas State (20-11) in a Midwest Regional first-round game. The Wildcats' top players -- freshmen Michael Beasley and Bill Walker -- average a combined 42.3 points, more than half of the Wildcats' 78.7 points a game.
"We'll look to come up with a big plan for stopping those guys," Hackett said. "Obviously, you have to try to limit a guy who scores 30 a night."
Beasley, who averages 26.5 points, said there was no defensive plan the Trojans could devise that would surprise him.
"I've seen a lot," he said. "I've seen about everything you can see."
Actually, he hasn't seen a USC defense that ranked first in the Pacific 10 Conference in field-goal percentage defense and 14th nationally in scoring defense this season, limiting opponents to 39.1% shooting and 63.2 points a game.
