Pete Carroll is not somebody you would expect to see roaming around the basketball locker room at Southern California. Yet the Trojans’ head football coach and three-time national champion is a frequent visitor to the USC basketball team, giving motivational speeches to the team, or showing off the university’s brand-new basketball arena, the Galen Center, to potential football recruits.

It is a scene that would have been hard to find just three years ago, when USC basketball was barely an afterthought at a school known for football.

The USC basketball program, led by second-year head coach Tim Floyd, is making the Southern Cal faithful take notice. The Trojans, sparked by Floyd, an influx of talent and a new arena, appear on the verge of earning their first NCAA Tournament bid since 2002, slowly emerging from under the shadow of the school’s football juggernaut.

‘There’s definitely a lot more excitement this year,’ sophomore forward Keith Wilkinson said. ‘Once we started winning and getting a couple good wins during the Pac-10 season we started to get a great fan base and we’ve been selling out. It’s just been a great atmosphere, lots of students and alumni. It’s been fun.’

So far the Trojans have beaten Arizona and No. 16 Oregon twice this year – both teams that appear Tournament bound. USC’s two losses to No. 4 UCLA this season came by a combined six points.

The sellouts and successes are a welcomed change at a program that just two years ago was mired in uncertainty. USC finished the 2005 season 12-17 – its third-straight losing season. The Trojans hired former Utah head coach Rick Majerus in the middle of the season to resurrect the program, but Majerus reneged on his decision five days later.

It was fitting the Trojans then turned to Floyd to be the program’s savior – a coach whose floundering career mimicked, in many ways, the Trojans program at the time.

Floyd had three successful college head coaching stints at Idaho, New Orleans and Iowa State, compiling a 260-143 record and five NCAA Tournament appearances over 13 years. His college success earned him a shot coaching in the NBA, where he encountered a whole lot of adversity and not much success. In 1998, he succeeded Phil Jackson as head coach of the Chicago Bulls and stayed for three seasons. He also coached the New Orleans Hornets in 2003, earning a trip to the playoffs before getting fired.

Floyd’s return to the college game has brought stability back to both his career and the Trojan program. After guiding USC to a winning record and an NIT appearance last season, Floyd’s Trojans are 21-10 this season, including an 11-7 record in the conference, and the No. 3 seed in the Pac-10 tournament. The Trojans will face Stanford tonight in their opening game of the tournament.

Floyd’s success has come as no surprise to his peers in the college ranks, who never lost faith in the coach’s ability despite his failures in the NBA.

‘Tim has done an exceptional job, and that shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody because Tim’s record is well-documented in terms of what kind of coach he is,’ Stanford head coach Trent Johnson said.

Floyd admits he is happy to be back in the college ranks; however, he refuses to take much credit for his program’s revival. Floyd gives much of that acclaim to a core of young players assembled before he arrived in Los Angeles.

‘Inheriting those three kids, Lodrick Stewart, Gabe (Pruitt) and Nick (Young), they can play for most anybody in the country,’ Floyd said. ‘We’ve managed to find some players that complement the skill level of those three players we inherited.’

That trio represents USC’s three top scorers this season and the engine that drives the Trojans’ offense. In a Jan. 18 upset of then-No. 11 Arizona, Young and Pruitt, both juniors, combined with Stewart, a senior, to score 64 points in the Trojans 80-73 victory over the Wildcats.

Floyd is also quick to point to USC’s Galen Center, which opened this fall, as a huge reason why the program’s future is bright. The facility features state-of-the-art locker rooms and training facilities in addition to a 10,258 seat arena.

‘I think there was a buzz with this new arena and the new staff coming in that allowed us to get the ear of local recruits,’ Floyd said. ‘We think the building has really helped change our program.’

So far the combination of the new coaching staff, a winning atmosphere and a new arena has proven effective for USC on the recruiting front, attracting players from all over the country. Freshman forward Taj Gibson, a native of Brooklyn, is averaging 11.8 points and 8.3 rebounds this season – stats which earned him a spot on the All-Pac-10 freshman team.

Next year, touted point guard O.J. Mayo, considered by some to be the top prospect in the 2007 class, will join the Trojans.

USC basketball may still have large strides to make to catch up with its gridiron counterpart, but Floyd’s squad is no longer merely an afterthought to anybody at USC, including Carroll.

‘As we’ve been winning, the two programs have sort of complemented each other well,’ Wilkinson said. ‘People are starting to take a lot of interest in our basketball team. If we can have two great programs, then it would be great for our university all around.’

Published on March 7, 2007 at 12:00 pm