When the USC women’s basketball team took its first loss of the season, to then-No. 6-ranked Notre Dame back in November, it responded by reeling off 15 straight wins.
Coming off its second loss, last weekend at Iowa, the No. 7 Trojans again took what they could from that setback and have seemingly come back stronger, blowing out Wisconsin by 22 points on the road Wednesday and then looking just as dominant Saturday at home against No. 8 Ohio State in an 84-63 win.
“Really, really big win for this team, for our program. We know how good Ohio State is. We know all the implications kind of on the line with both teams’ records and where we stand in the conference and nationally. Just really proud of our team,” coach Lindsay Gottlieb said. “We felt like this game would be about toughness, and I think we answered that call.”
This was the third top-10 win this season for USC (21-2, 11-1 Big Ten), including a Dec. 21 victory at then-No. 4 UConn and a Jan. 8 win at then-No. 8 Maryland. The Trojans hold onto second place in the conference standings behind unbeaten UCLA and ahead of Ohio State (20-3, 9-3).
Kiki Iriafen led the way for USC with 24 points and 13 rebounds, JuJu Watkins overcame a slow start to chip in 17 points and 10 boards and freshman Kennedy Smith had 13 points, 13 rebounds for her first career double-double along with a team-high 5 assists.
This is the first time since 2009 vs. Long Beach State that three Trojans recorded double-doubles in the same game.
Watkins started the game 0-for-11 from the field before making her first bucket with 2:02 left in the third quarter (though she had scored 5 points from the foul line already), but the Trojans showed again that this is a deep and complementary roster that finds a way even when its star is struggling.
“I mean, look, we want everyone clicking, we want everyone in a rhythm, but the gravity that she draws and attracts opens things up for other people,” Gottlieb said. “Everyone’s got her back and they’re capable of making plays and still getting her in her spots. It’s a good thing. I don’t think we were in a position last year where we could have won games without her scoring as much as she had to score. Obviously, we’re built a little differently this year.”
The Trojans also overcome an uncharacteristic 23 turnovers (compared to just 10 for Ohio State), but that didn’t seem to matter either.
“Something that we talked about was regardless what happens we’re going to make mistakes, we’re going to have turnovers — how do we respond, how do we react?” Iriafen said. “So for us, transition defense and off turnovers as well, we were all sprinting back, bigs were trying to shadow for the guards. So regardless of the mistake … we have to get back, Ohio State’s a great team and they will capitalize on that.”
Ohio State jumped out to a 7-2 lead, but the Trojans quickly tied it on two free throws from Iriafen, a 3-pointer from Smith and soon took the lead at 10-9 on a 3-pointer from fellow freshman Avery Howell and led the rest of the way — leading 34-26 at halftime, 59-45 after three quarters and so on.
Ohio State shot just 29.4 percent from the field overall (20 of 68), just 2 of 11 from 3-point range and had 0 second-change points as USC dominated the rebounding advantage, 62-30.
That’s the most rebounds for the Trojans since 1999 and USC’s biggest rebound advantage in a game since outrebounding Hope International by 33 on Nov. 13, 2015 (52-19).
Gottlieb praised Iriafen and Smith as the catalysts for the defensive performance.
“There’s not enough I can say about these two. I think they set the tone for us defensively,” she said. “Kiki has every opportunity not to take every defensive challenge with everything we ask of her offensively, but she does time and again. And I think the improvement she’s made at the defensive end is as significant as we’ve seen. And I don’t mean improvement through the season — I mean like from when she came to us and what she’s doing.
“And Kennedy is just really, really, really special, and you see it when we ask her to guard an incredibly fast kid in the full court in [Jaloni] Cambridge or match up against Cotie McMahon, who’s strong. I thought they set the tone. This is a game where we dominated the inside with our offensive rebounds and production from the frontcourt.”
The Trojans are rolling again after the setback vs. Iowa and have a huge rivalry showdown with No. 1-ranked UCLA on Thursday at Galen Center.
“I think we just made a pact amongst ourselves — it’s our choice how to respond to a loss,” Gottlieb said. “When we lost to Notre Dame we made a conscious effort to look inward and get better. And I think we did that again after Iowa. I think probably the messaging or whatever we come to was different because it was different things we need to improve since then, but I just credit our team with just taking every lesson and trying to bounce forward from it.”
