(Shotgun Spratling/Neon Tommy)

So when asked earlier this week what USC needed to do to snap its five-game losing streak, Kevin O’Neill, the coach, was typically direct. He expected his team to play hard, to defend and to share the ball, and to do all of that for 40 minutes.

Mission accomplished, for Saturday, at least, as the Trojans (4-6) got back in the win column with a 70-26 dismantling of UC Riverside.

“I liked how we played as a group, we were outstanding defensively,” O’Neill said after the game. “Our effort was there the whole time tonight. We know it’s not Minnesota, but it’s a step back from not playing hard.”

Make no mistake; for as impressive as the offense looked behind Jio Fontan and Eric Wise’s combined 28 points, this was a defensive triumph, first and foremost. It didn’t only come in the scoreline, gaudy lopsided as it was. The Trojans suffocated the Highlanders, holding them to putrid 19% shooting and just 13 total points before a late run in garbage time. They did it in the paint, with Dewayne Dedmon and Omar Oraby combining to block nine shots. They did it on the perimeter, where UCR couldn’t mustered only a solitary three point make, 13 of their 14 attempts. They did it everywhere, and anywhere, it could be done and they did it with such verve that O’Neill expressed empathy for the struggles of the Trojans’ opponents.

“I feel for anyone in that situation,” he said rather solemnly. “Jim Woolridge is a heck of a coach. I’ve been in a rebuilding situation, and it’s hard.

Not that there weren’t offensive fireworks. O’Neill has made several tweaks to his offense over the last two weeks of practice to emphasize more off-ball movement and it showed on Saturday. That shone through in some beautiful cuts to the basket, with Fontan and Byron Wesley each supplying a highlight dish through traffic as part of 16 total assists on the night. It also came from the corners, where USC was as precise as Riverside was profligate, nailing 9 of their 20 attempts.

“We just moved the ball better,” O’Neill said flatly. “It wasn't just one pass, jack up shot. One pass, dribble-dribble-dribble.”

“It’s a process,” Fontan said of the team’s growth on offense. “We've got a whole bunch of new guys and we're getting a lot more comfortable with each other on the court. For the most part, when you've got guys comfortable playing with each other and you've kind of got an idea of who is who, you start to play a lot better.”

That was one of several domains where Fontan shined in what O’Neill termed as his captain’s “most confident” performance of the year. Fontan hit all three of his shots from the beyond the arc, and he ably filled his distributor role with six assists, none flashier than an early alley-oop to Dedmon that moved the decibel level as high as the sparsely populated Galen Center crowd could crank it.

Yet the biggest key of all was a level of aggressiveness unseen since his return from the knee injury that cost him his junior season. Fontan deked and dived, slalomed and swerved around the Highlanders the way a player of his talent – what O’Neill believes is NBA talent – ought to.

Nowhere was that better evidenced than a bucket late in the first half, in which he almost turned a Riverside defender fully around on crossover to barge into the lane, take a bump, and drop in a floater en route to a three-point play. That was the Fontan from two years ago, when he was one of the leading protagonists behind the Trojans’ last trip to the NCAA Tournament. That’s the Fontan that O’Neill believes his team needs to make a return trip this year.

“I’ve been saying this all along: Once he hits his stride, we’re going to be fine, and we’re going to be good,” O’Neill remarked. “Nobody understands how hard it is to come back off a major knee surgery… the mental part, from what I’ve seen over the years, is monumental. There's a pressure coming back off a knee injury personally and a pressure put on you to excel as the captain of a team. It takes time, and the thing I like about Jio is that he just kept plugging and playing hard.”

“As far as making shots, I’d say this was my best job,” said Fontan of returning to his pre-injury form. “Every game, I’m getting closer [to pre-injury form]. I feel my speed is there and my strength. [Now], it's just a matter of seeing the spaces I get in the court.”

The Trojans’ next step is to keep this momentum going for their next game, against Wise’s former school UC-Irvine. Not surprisingly, O’Neill intends on sticking with what worked so staggeringly well on Saturday.

“Going forward, we’ll play energy guys and we’re going to play the guys that play hardest all the time,” he said. “We’re not going to compromise team play.”

That last line might be aimed at J.T. Terrell, the team’s leading scorer who went from starting every night to only playing one minute of garbage time in the win. It could also reflect the dedication of Brendyn Taylor and James Blasczyk, whose intensity on defense made them the first two subs off the bench. Whether it’s either, or some of each, remains to be seen, although O’Neill did say that the starting five will remain the same for Irvine.

But, in the here and now, it’s enough to get back in the win column.

“This gives us something to smile about,” Fontan said.

“We haven’t been able to smile for a while.”

Reach Staff Reporter Mike Piellucci here. Follow him on Twitter here.