USC Trojans at California Golden Bears
Wednesday, November 11, 2026
11:00 PM ET, Haas Pavilion
No. 21 USC is an 8.5-point favorite at California, with the total at 161.5 at most books. My play is Cal +8.5.
Two old Pac-12 rivals, one ESPN2 window after most of the country has gone to bed, and a number that’s paying a lot of attention to one weekend in Lake Tahoe.
That weekend was a good one for USC. Rodney Rice scored 32 and Alijah Arenas added 30 in a 93-86 win over Wichita State, the first time two Trojans hit 30 in the same game since 2015, and Arenas picked up Big Ten Player of the Week honors. The same day, on the same trip, Cal got pushed around 86-68 by a Houston team that pushes everybody around. The market saw both results and slapped Cal with a near double-digit number on its own floor.
The ratings don’t see a nine-point gap
I like USC. Eric Musselman has a real roster: a backcourt averaging 25.5 points (Arenas) and nine assists (Rice), plus 6-foot-11 Adonis Ratliff and his 7-foot twin Darius on the back line. Barttorvik has the Trojans 34th nationally. But it has Cal 98th, and when you run the two teams’ adjusted offense, defense and tempo through a basic projection and add home court, USC comes out roughly four or five points better. Not nine.
Yes, it’s November. Those ratings are still mostly preseason priors after two or three games each, so I’m not treating them like gospel. But that’s exactly the point. The priors say this is a mid-single-digit game, and nothing in USC’s two wins or Cal’s one loss is big enough to move it this far.
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Cal can shoot its way through the back door
Michael Cooper is the reason I’m comfortable taking points. The sophomore leads the country with 15 made threes and is hitting 62.5% of them, and Cal as a team is making 44% from deep and more than 12 threes a game. Shooting like that keeps an underdog attached late, and a backdoor cover is always on the table when a team can bomb from outside. Cal also went 17-5 at Haas Pavilion last season, and USC hasn’t won in Berkeley since November 2022.
Why I could be wrong
Size. Cal still doesn’t have center Lee Dort, its lone returning starter, and the Ratliff twins can own the glass the same way Houston did. Cal coach Mark Madsen blamed his team’s transition defense and rebounding for the Houston loss, and USC forced Wichita State into 20 turnovers. If Cooper cools off and the Trojans turn misses into runouts, this can get away. Cal’s early three-point numbers came partly against Adams State and Radford, too.
Still, I’d rather have the shooting team and the points at home than lay a big number on a road favorite in the first week of the season.
Projected score: USC 81, Cal 76
The Pick: Cal +8.5 (-105)
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