The USC women’s basketball team is highly skilled and experienced. It has a quality coach, Lindsay Gottlieb. It has a superstar, JuJu Watkins, who is now joined by superstar Kiki Iriafen and star Talia von Oelhoffen. Rayah Marshall is the anchor in the paint, and there’s a top-ranked recruiting class ready to offer support and balance to the USC lineup. The raw quality of this team is considerable, but when we contemplate why USC is a legitimate Final Four contender, the word “trust” is important to note. Boardroom Magazine’s feature on JuJu Watkins offers some key insights here.
First off, JuJu Watkins trusts coach Lindsay Gottlieb:
“She’s a great person, she’s super smart and just really everything I was looking for in a coach,” Watkins says. “She definitely pushes me in so many ways, and having that feeling that I can go to her about anything, I think that that’s half the battle. So yea, grateful for her.”
Second, Gottlieb sees how JuJu trusts herself and teammates, being comfortable in communicating to others when needed:
“The other thing that jumps out is she really is a dog and a winner. She’ll play through injury. She’s tough. She exudes sort of a competitiveness that, again, other people really feed off of. And then I would say that the growth we’ve seen is really her trusting her voice and being a vocal leader as well.”
Barring injuries to key players, USC will win a lot of games this season. However, making the Final Four will be tough. There will be games and moments when the Trojans encounter turbulence and adversity. That circle of trust — Gottlieb, JuJu, the assistant coaches, and the rest of the USC women’s basketball roster — will need to show its strength at the right times.
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