Game 14: Michigan at USC Preview

Michigan resumes Big Ten play on Saturday night (8:00 p.m., FOX) in Los Angeles against USC. The new conference rivals are facing each other for the third time ever and the first time since 1981. Nothing says conference basketball quite like a 2,000-mile road trip and the first head-to-head meeting in almost a half-century.

The Trojans are one of the more difficult teams in the league to understand. They got off to a 5-4 start and have lost to the three best opponents they’ve faced, but they ran Washington off the floor (85-61) on the road and have strung together four wins in a row.

At 83rd on KenPom, USC finds itself in a Big Ten dead zone where it lags behind the league’s 14 top-60 teams but is still better than the teams you’d expect to find near the bottom of a high-major conference.