The South Florida men's basketball team is like the majority of Division I programs in the country. Four games into the regular season, the Bulls remain in the "figuring it out" stage.
That was evident Saturday afternoon at the Yuengling Center. Just over three minutes into the game, the Bulls had scored 10 points and held visiting Coppin State scoreless.
Blowout city, right?
Not even close.
The Bulls played even with the visitors over the final 37 minutes of the game and finished with a 73-63 victory. But while this win didn't do much to pad USF's resume when March Madness Selection Sunday rolls around, a loss could have been a millstone around their necks for the remainder of the season.
That's what happened when Amir Abdur-Rahim's first and only USF season with some really bad non-conference losses. Even though the Bulls went on to achieve the regular-season American Conference championship and a national ranking befitting their 25 wins, they never recovered from from those early losses.
As a result, they had to settle for an NIT bid.
— South Florida Men's Basketball (@USFMBB) November 14, 2026
The good about this game:
Start with Zayden High. A 6-10 transfer from North Carolina, High was mighty in this game, contributing 18 points and a career-best 17 rebounds.
He did that by staying out of foul trouble. Zay, who has struggled to stay out of foul trouble in his career, had ohly two whistles against him in this game. That allowed him to stay on the court for 30 minutes and the Eagles didnt have an answer for him.
The Bulls also held a decisive edge on the boards (46-31) and generally took good care of the ball.
"We out rebounded them by whatever it was. We only turned the ball over eight times against the funky defense. We made the plays down the stretch. We got to the line," head coach Chris Mack said.
"The majority of us made the foul shots, you know, shooting 76% from the line on almost 40 attempts. So we did some good things. But there are certainly some things we got to get better at."
The not-so-good about this game
The obvious thing was USF's shooting.
The Bulls were 4-of-28 from three, including 1-of-16 in the second half, and 20-of-58 overall. They didn't appear to rush the 3-pointers, shooting in rhythm generally. The ball just didn't go in.
Through four games -- admittedly a small sample size -- USF is 29.4% beyond the arc and 44.9% overall.
That has to get a lot better.
What Coach Chris Mack had to say
On Zayden High: He is such an integral part of what we do. We ask him to do a lot, and we wouldn't ask him to do a lot if we didn't think he was capable of doing a lot. You know, he's a terrific passer. He's very mobile, and he could hedge a ball screen. You know, he's smart. He reads the game and sees the game in ways that not a lot of fives do. And so we use them in a lot of different ways. I think he has to get time, stronger with the ball,less casual, as I like to talk to him about, But I'd also, um, I'd also, like, give him the benefit of the doubt a little bit. He hasn't played in three years.
On USF's defensive look: I thought we had a few times where we've got to make better decisions on the break, but you're not gonna speed up a slow offense (like Coppin). Our defense isn't designed to take you out of everything you run. We're not trying to open up the floor. We don't have Izaiyah Nelson back there, blocking every shot. We're a little bit smaller. We have some good bigs. They're not necessarily huge shot blockers. We've got to do a great job of keeping the ball in front of us. By and large, we did a better job tonight than we had the last few games."
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