We’ve all seen college basketball teams go on a run in the course of a game, but they don’t usually last this long or are this lopsided.
The USC women went on a relentless, 17-minute 60-16 run to turn a valiant first-half effort by Saint Louis into a 104-65 rout Friday as part of the Acrisure Series in Palm Desert, California.
With 1:12 to go in the first half, the Trojans led 38-37. With 4:45 to go in the game, the score was 98-53. Superstar JuJu Watkins finished with 34 points and talented transfer Kiki Iriafen added 30 more as the No. 6-ranked Trojans put on a second-half show in a 104-65 victory over the Billikens.
Saint Louis played a zone defense that flummoxed the Trojans at times. Coach Lindsay Gottlieb said she gave her a team a pointed haltime speech, particularly on how to attack the zone.
“We haven’t faced a ton of zone so there was just some technical adjustments there and as Kiki might tell you I actually demonstrated a post-up and how to get the ball inside because I was fiery about it,” Gottlieb said with a smile while sitting next to Iriafen in a post-game news conference. “And it was really just a level of intensity and to be consistent with how we want to play and not worry about what the opponent is doing. Credit to Saint Louis, we let them feel good and they ran with that. We just had to get back to ourselves.”
Just how fiery was that halftime speech?
“Oh she got us pumped and it lit a fire under us,” Iriafen said with her eyes widening. “We don’t want coach to have to ignite that for us. We want to be able to do it for each other and that’s something we’ll continue to work on, but you could definitely see it in the third quarter.”
That third quarter was a 37-8 steamrolling. And it was the Trojans’ other star transfer Talia von Oelhoffen that kick-started it. She hit a 3-pointer, then had a steal and score, then an assist on a lay-up by Rayah Marshall and then another 3-pointer. It was all part of a 12-2 run in the first 3 minutes of the second half that turned the game into a runaway.
Von Oelhoffen is a transfer from Oregon State, and Iriafen is a transfer from Stanford. Both were leaders on their former teams and are learning how to assimilate their skills and voices with their new team. Iriafen said it can be tricky.
“That’s something I’m still navigating and being on this team I’m trying to bring my experience from my past school. I am a senior, but also I’m kind of a freshman in a way, learning everything here,” Iriafen said. “I think my coaches built a lot of confidence into me and they know what I’m capable of, so for me to start being more vocal and helping the freshman and all the new people on the team, I do whatever I can.”
Watkins and Iriafen, who is expected to be a top pick in the next WNBA Draft, showed the kind of scary combination they can be.
Watkins was much more aggressive in this one compared to Wednesday’s 20-point effort in a win over Seton Hall. Watkins had the Billikens’ defense on their heels all night with aggressive takes that ended with a lay-up or one of her patented pull-up jumpers with 34 points on 12-of-22 shooting, including three 3-pointers.
Iriafen does her work primarily in the paint and she was sharp on Friday. She hit 9 of 16 field goals and a perfect 12 of 12 from the free throw line. She also had 12 rebounds.
“Especially coming in here after a loss, it was a week for us to get better at basketball and we did that,” Gottlieb said, also taking a moment to praise the organizers of the tournament for a well-run event. “To have two dominant scorers on the floor and then playing with a togetherness as a team was a good formula for us.”
Von Oelhoffen finished with 13 points and freshman Avery Howell had 11 off the bench.
USC (6-1) will host Cal Baptist on Tuesday before playing its first-ever Big Ten game on Saturday, Dec. 7 on the road against fellow Pac-12 convert Oregon.
Saint Louis, a team that won the Women’s NIT Championship last year, fell to 3-5 on the season, but they had the crowd buzzing with their first-half performance, pushing the No. 6-ranked Trojans. Mia Bergstrom led the way with 19 points for the Billikens and Brooklyn Gray came off the bench to score 14.
Shad Powers is a columnist for The Desert Sun. Reach him at shad.powers@desertsun.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: JuJu Watkins and Kiki Iriafen combine for 64 points to lead USC women’s basketball to win
