Shot to jaw doesn’t keep Gibson down

SPOKANE, WASH. — He couldn’t hear and he couldn’t talk, but Taj Gibson had possession of all the faculties he needed Sunday to help USC advance to its first Sweet 16 since 2001.

The freshman forward played the final 15 minutes of USC’s 87-68 victory over Texas in an East Regional second-round game at Spokane Arena with a badly bruised jaw after taking an elbow to the face from Longhorns swingman Damion James.

“I couldn’t talk for a while. I couldn’t hear at all,” said Gibson, who received the injury when James went for a layup. “They were just giving me a lot of sign language and I kept playing.”

Gibson had the jaw reset on the sideline, where he sat for a few minutes with a bag of ice pressed against his cheek and his face contorted into a pained expression. Slowly, he began to regain his hearing.

He reentered the game and drew a flurry of fouls that propelled him to score 13 of his 17 points in the second half to go with his 14 rebounds.

Gibson made nine of 14 free throws and had a couple of important put-back baskets to help the Trojans hold off every Longhorns run.

Along the way, James re-aggravated Gibson’s injury on a hard foul, but there was no way Gibson was coming out.

“I just told myself I was going to try to get every rebound and get every loose ball,” said Gibson, who recorded his 10th double-double. “If the ball went on the floor I was going to dive for it.

“I was just going to be there for my teammates.”

Gibson’s reward for the inspired play is a trip near his home in Brooklyn, N.Y., to play North Carolina in a regional semifinal Friday at East Rutherford, N.J. “I’ll try to bring all of Brooklyn to root for SC,” Gibson said.

Will he need to wear a protective mask against the Tar Heels?

“He’s from New York,” USC Coach Tim Floyd said. “He’s not going to have a mask on.”

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Floyd and North Carolina Coach Roy Williams met in the NCAA tournament before they became rival coaches for four years in the Big 12 Conference.

Third-seeded Kansas and Williams defeated 14th-seeded New Orleans and Floyd, 55-49, in a Southeast Regional first-round game in 1991.

Floyd’s Trojans defeated Williams’ Tar Heels, 74-59, on Dec. 21, 2005, at the Sports Arena, though Floyd noted that North Carolina has reloaded this season with a group of talented freshmen.

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The Trojans are 5-4 all-time against Texas. Their largest margin of victory over the Longhorns came in an 84-62 victory in 1986.

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