LOS ANGELES — For a week, for all intents and purposes, 6-foot-9 USC graduate assistant Elston Jones was Michigan’s Danny Wolf. Jones, who once won the Big West Sixth Man of the Year at UC Irvine, had to play the role. Wolf stood 7-foot-0, and USC already had to contend with scheming against Michigan’s other 7-foot-big Vladislav Goldin. Eric Musselman’s first-year roster at USC, by contrast, was loaded with a bevy of long wings, his tallest player 6-foot-10 starting center Josh Cohen. There were few others in the building who actually could impersonate Wolf in sheer stature, and so Jones became “vital” for the week of preparation before USC’s Big Ten home opener, as USC wing Kevin Patton Jr. said Saturday night. But there was no real way to truly prepare, as USC found out in an 85-74 loss to Michigan Saturday night, for two seven-footers that could somehow run pick-and-roll with each other. “We tried as best we could, putting our tallest guys that we had in their position,” freshman guard Wesley Yates III said postgame, speaking on Wolf and Goldin. “Just trying to make it like a real game – not just coasting through it, because we’re not playing the actual players or they’re not the same height, or strong enough.” They tried, yes. The entire roster tried, in a valiant effort in front of a rocking Galen Center Saturday night, a dormant building brought to life by the buzz of a home opener in a new conference and a heavy Michigan contingent. The youthful Yates III was electric, helping pull USC back from a 15-point second-half deficit, dropping 19 points with a couple of dazzling and-one finishes. Point guard Desmond Claude continued a steady scoring stretch, also finishing with 19. Patton Jr., a 6-foot-8 forward, was a catalyst of effective small-ball lineups, finishing with 14 points and a couple of blocks. A layup from Patton Jr., a three-pointer from Chibuzo Agbo and a free throw from Claude, and USC suddenly sat down just 73-71 with 3:23 left. But Claude was whistled for a devastating fifth foul on the next possession, USC’s offense going cold. And Wolf simply put the Trojans away, a player Musselman called a “flat-out” NBA talent postgame, zipping a pass inside to Goldin and then dropping in a layup of his own with a little over a minute left for a 10-point lead. The fiery Musselman tossed a hand in dismissal at one of the referees after the postgame buzzer sounded, USC playing much of the second half in foul trouble, with Yates III and Agbo each sitting on four fouls. “It’s not worth talking about, to be honest,” Musselman said postgame, asked if there was frustration with the referees, “because there was a stretch there, that – we were not trying to foul. Like, we were trying to be super disciplined, and they went to the foul line when we were way more aggressive early in the game and there wasn’t fouls.” But it was what it was, Musselman added. There wasn’t an excuse. Michigan won. And they won on the back of Wolf, who finished with a dominant 21 points, 13 rebounds and seven assists. USC contained Goldin well enough, finishing with just two first-half points and 11 on the night. But his frontcourt partner simply took over in the second half, the Wolverines building that 15-point lead in large part on the back of four Wolf layups in the first four minutes after the break, as Michigan largely played Cohen off the floor. Patton Jr. fought admirably in the second half, and Agbo and Thomas all bumped above their heights with Wolf and Goldin. It wasn’t a surprise, as Musselman remarked postgame, that his Trojans (9-5, 1-2 Big Ten) hadn’t gotten “killed” throughout the season by opposing bigs, his teams in his tenure at Nevada and Arkansas built on their ability to play small-ball. But USC’s head coach also lamented the injury absences of 6-foot-6 Matt Knowling and 6-foot-7 Terrance Williams II, both forwards integral to the Trojans’ ability to switch, pointing to a clear need for differing roster construction in years to come. “I mean, we don’t want to play every year without a true center,” Musselman said postgame. This was mostly the hand he was dealt, Musselman constructing his roster in haste from pieces still floating in the transfer portal after his hire in the spring. But Wolf and Goldin were both transfers, too, committing to play for first-year Wolverines head coach Dusty May in late April. And small-ball, simply, wasn’t enough on Saturday.