Tag: ncaa basketball

Texas A&M women’s basketball takes down No. 11 Kentucky at Reed Arena

Texas A&M women’s stuns the Kentucky Wildcats in a 61-55 upset victory for their third SEC victory

The Texas A&M women’s basketball team has been full of ups and downs with both teetering on the extreme sides of both. Thursday night was the highest of the highs when they kicked off No. 11 Kentucky giving them their first SEC loss of the season.

Defense was the name of the game, allowing the Aggies to pull away late in the fourth quarter to upset the Wildcats 61-55 in front of the crowd at Reed Arena. Coming to the night Kentucky was averaging 83.2 points a game in league play, but A&M clamped down forcing them to shoot an abysmal .313 from the field and an even worse .056 from the three-point line.

A&M would outscore KU 36-25 to close the game comfortably for their second top-25 win in January. It’s been a rough season but when they are hitting all cylinders, they are a solid team that can up a fight against most teams in the nation.

GAME NOTES:

  • Aicha Coulibaly 21 points and 7 rebounds
  • 42.9% FG / 33.3% 3PT / 64.3% FT

Texas A&M will go on the road to face LSU on Jan. 26 at 3:00p.m. CST. The game can be watched on the SEC Network.

Contact/Follow us @AggiesWire on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Texas A&M news, notes, and opinions. Follow Jarrett Johnson on Twitter: @whosnextsports1.

ESPN names TV announcers for prime time Alabama-LSU game

Here’s who will have the TV call of Alabama vs. LSU.

Next up for Nate Oats’ Alabama Crimson Tide are the LSU Tigers at Coleman Coliseum Saturday night.

The Crimson Tide (16-3 overall, 5-1 SEC) and Tigers (12-6, 1-4) are set for a 7:30 p.m. CT tipoff. The game can be seen on SEC Network.

ESPN this week announced broadcast assignments and commentator pairings for its Week 12 slate of college basketball games, including Alabama-LSU. The broadcast team of Dave Neal (play-by-play) and Pat Bradley (analyst) will have the TV call of Tide vs. Tigers.

Alabama is seeking its third straight win after back-to-back victories against Vanderbilt and No. 9 Kentucky. The Crimson Tide went over 100 points in both games, with Mouhamed Dioubate and Aden Holloway finishing with 22 in the win against the Commodores on Tuesday.

LSU fell 68-57 to No. 13 Texas A&M in College Station this week.

Alabama will be wearing a new uniform combination for Saturday’s game, an inverse of their alternate white jerseys/shorts combination that the school introduced last season.

Alabama vs. LSU series history at a glance

Alabama and LSU will be meeting for the 193rd time on the hardwood in a series that dates back to 1916. The Crimson Tide lead the all-time head-to-head series, 117-75. Alabama has won four straight vs. the Tigers and nine of the last 10 meetings, including last year’s 109-92 win in Baton Rouge. Nate Oats is 9-2 vs. LSU in his six seasons in Tuscaloosa.

The Crimson Tide are ranked No. 3 in this week’s USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll and No. 4 in the AP Top 25 poll. Alabama is No. 7 in the latest NET rankings and No. 8 in the latest KenPom ratings.

LSU is unranked in Top 25 polls and are No. 69 in the NET rankings.

Contact/Follow us @RollTideWire on X, and like our page on Facebook for ongoing coverage of Alabama news and notes, plus opinions. 

USC rout of Rutgers enables bench players to get extended minutes

USC coach Lindsay Gottlieb was able to give her reserves 79 minutes. JuJu Watkins played only 30, Kiki Iriafen only 27. That will keep this team fresh for Maryland.

Winning a game by 50 points is fun removed from any additional layers of context or explanation. However, one very tangible benefit a blowout offers is the chance to rest starters and make sure they don’t get overworked over the course of the season. USC women’s basketball picked a really good time to give its starters a lighter night. The Trojans’ 92-42 win over Rutgers on Sunday in New Jersey — in which USC led by 35 points early in the third quarter — gave the backups a lot of minutes and enabled JuJu Watkins to save some fuel for a big game later this week.

Basketball has five players on the court at all times. In a college game, which lasts 40 minutes, that means a coach has to account for 200 game minutes. Let’s do some quick math: If all five starters have to play 35 minutes, that’s 175 game minutes for the starters, leaving only 25 minutes for the bench. If all five starters play 30 minutes, that’s 150 minutes for the starters, leaving 50 for the bench.

Against Rutgers, the decisive win enabled coach Lindsay Gottlieb to hand out 79 minutes to the bench. The starters played only 121 minutes. JuJu Watkins regularly plays 35 to 38 minutes in important games. She was able to get more rest on Sunday, playing only 30 minutes. That’s a short night for her. No other USC starter played more than 27 minutes (Kiki Iriafen), and three starters didn’t play more than 23 minutes.

All of this matters in the big picture. USC giving starters shorter nights over the next two months will leave this team physically and mentally fresh for the NCAA Tournament.

All of this also matters in a much shorter and more immediate context, too. USC’s very next game is a huge one, on Wednesday night at undefeated Maryland, which is ranked in the top 10. USC getting a light night of work against Rutgers, with zero stress or drama, will have the Trojans fresh for the Terrapins in a major Big Ten women’s basketball showcase.

USC hammers Rutgers by 50 points in Sunday night runaway

USC beat Rutgers by 50 despite shooting under 33 percent on 3-pointers and committing 17 turnovers. Does that tell you how lopsided this game was?

The Piscataway Runaway. That’s one label for Sunday night’s USC-Rutgers women’s basketball game in New Jersey. USC women’s basketball marched to the East Coast and absolutely dismantled Rutgers in a game which was never close. One could tell five minutes in that Rutgers was not going to hang with the Women of Troy. This was a wipeout from start to finish. The final score was 92-42, and frankly, the game did not even feel that close.

USC could have won by 70, not 50, if it wanted to. Naturally, backups got a lot of fourth-quarter minutes, as the Trojans put the game to bed early. They led by 23 at halftime, 37-14, and then built that lead to 41 points (59-18) midway through the third quarter. USC came very close to holding Rutgers under 10 points in each of the first three quarters. Rutgers scored 10 in the third after managing just eight in the first and six in the second.

How lopsided was this game? Rutgers committed roughly twice as many turnovers (27) as the number of field goal attempts it made (14).

The scary part of all this: USC did not play a good offensive game. You might see the 92 points and think the Trojans played good offense, but they really didn’t. They hit just 9 of 28 3-pointers, under 33 percent. They committed 17 turnovers. That’s not elite. USC just had bigger, more physical players at all five spots on the floor. Rutgers was helpless, and the Trojans did their job. JuJu Watkins scored 23 points and grabbed 14 points to lead USC before a large Rutgers crowd which wanted to see JuJu do her thing. She most certainly did.

USC now prepares for a super showdown on Wednesday night at unbeaten Maryland. We’ll have a lot more on this game in the coming days. Stay tuned.

UCLA women’s basketball needs to contain Indiana’s 3-point shooting

Indiana has a good 3-point-shooting team. UCLA women’s basketball must be prepared.

UCLA women’s basketball goes to Indiana on Saturday to face the Hoosiers. If you want one big game key — the one thing UCLA must do in Bloomington — it’s very simple. The Bruins must limit Indiana’s effectiveness as a 3-point-shooting team.

The Indiana blog site Crimson Quarry laid out the details on this point:

Indiana’s greatest strength offensively is its shooting ability from beyond the arc. You’d feel good about all but one of the Hoosiers’ usual starters (Meister) taking shots from deep.

When Indiana had to contend with South Carolina’s size in last year’s Sweet Sixteen, Teri Moren leaned on a gameplan that heavily emphasized the Hoosiers’ shooting ability from deep and it helped the team nearly come back and threaten the Gamecocks in the closing minutes.

UCLA’s Cori Close is well aware of Indiana’s shooting and is preparing the Bruins to run the Hoosiers’ off the three point line. Any attempts in the paint are going to have to contend with Betts looming, so Indiana has to find a way to shoot.

The Hoosiers will need big games from Yarden Garzon and Shay Ciezki in order to have a shot in this one. Help from Chloe Moore-McNeil, Sydney Parrish or even Henna Sandvik off the bench would go a long way.

The game starts just after 9 a.m. Pacific time on Fox Sports.

USC women’s basketball film study of victory against Nebraska

USC women’s basketball expert Cece Clay offers another detailed video analysis of the Trojans, this time after their win over Nebraska. Check it out.

Earlier this week, we shared USC women’s basketball video analysis of the Trojans’ win over Michigan. Analyst Cece Clay, a former basketball coach and player, went into the film room for some clips of USC-Michigan and looked at what the Trojans did — and didn’t — do well versus the Wolverines. Cece’s video analysis appears on her TikTok channel and is a must-watch for USC fans who want to learn more about basketball and this USC women’s basketball team.

We just aired an episode of our Trojans Wired podcast with Cece as our guest commentator and analyst. Cece offered more on the Nebraska game and also provided an overview of the USC women’s basketball season to this point. We covered a lot of ground, offering player analysis but also looking at some team benchmarks for the coming months of Big Ten basketball as this team pursues a spot in the Women’s Final Four this April in Tampa. Check out our podcast with Cece.

Now, to the main event: Cece, in addition to podcasting with us, has just released her newest piece of video analysis at TikTok. She has a fresh 10-minute video segment on the win over Nebraska, looking at USC’s “read and react” offense under Lindsay Gottlieb and the mistakes the Trojans made in transition defense in the first half.

Be sure to regularly follow Cece Clay, not just Trojans Wire, for USC women’s basketball coverage throughout the season.

UCLA begins life on the road in the Midwest

UCLA faces a good Nebraska team on Saturday, and also questions about body clocks heading into the Big Ten.

UCLA basketball is beginning life in the Big Ten Conference. The Bruins are used to road trips to Pullman, Washington, and Tucson, Arizona. They are not used to road trips to Lincoln, Nebraska, but that’s what the Bruins will do on Saturday when they face Fred Hoiberg’s Huskers.

UCLA will travel multiple time zones. In the Pac-12, it would travel no more than one time zone and would usually play mid-afternoon or evening games on Saturdays. This Nebraska game involves a trip to the Central time zone for a game which starts at 1 p.m. local time in Lincoln, which is 11 a.m. Pacific time for the Bruins. Could this be a body-clock game? It’s not the norm for UCLA. The Bruins would very rarely if ever play an 11 a.m. local time game, maybe once in a great while at Arizona or Arizona State — noon Mountain, 11 Pacific — but that was not a frequent occurrence.

This is definitely going to be different. Moreover, Nebraska just won its Christmas tournament in Hawaii, beating Oregon State in the championship game. The Huskers soundly defeated Indiana in Big Ten play earlier this season. They are capable.

UCLA will need to beat a good opponent … and the body-clock question.

UCLA’s team-first mentality was evident in 16-point win over Michigan

UCLA assisted on 29 of 35 made baskets against Michigan. That is spectacular.

The Michigan Wolverines are a good team. They entered this week in Los Angeles at 10-2 for the season. Yet, both UCLA and USC made the Wolverines second-best this week in Southern California. After USC beat Michigan on Sunday night, UCLA women’s basketball handled the Wolverines by 16 points on Wednesday, winning 86-70 in a New Year’s Day matinee game.

Statistics can and do lie. They can often fail to tell the full story of a game. They sometimes tell completely misleading tales about a game. If you watch a game, the numbers can often paint a picture completely at odds with the reality you observed with your own eyes. However, in this win over Michigan for UCLA, the box score did not lie. The stats did tell the story of how and why UCLA won so comfortably.

The biggest and most telling number in this whole game was not points. It was not connected to rebounds, steals or blocked shots. It wasn’t 3-point shooting, either, though Michigan going just 5 of 19 on triples was very important.

The most revealing statistic from this UCLA women’s basketball victory: 29 assists. The Bruins assisted on nearly all of their 35 made field goals. Get this, too: All five UCLA starters handed out at least three dimes, with Kiki Rice giving out 10 and Lauren Betts adding five. That’s a ton of assist passes. That reflects a well-connected offense with five players all understanding what to do, where to be, how to move, and how to read defenses. Cori Close had her team in sync, and when that happens, UCLA is just not going to lose.

UCLA women’s basketball has so many obvious strengths. This might be the biggest one, if the Bruins can sustain it for the whole season.

Lauren Betts’ passing makes UCLA tough to beat

Lauren Betts scores, blocks shots, and rebounds. She also passes out of double-teams, which makes UCLA especially lethal.

On Wednesday against Michigan, UCLA women’s basketball superstar Lauren Betts reminded everyone why she is one of the best players in the sport. Her stat line in the 86-70 win over the Wolverines included 13 points, 10 rebounds, 4 blocked shots, and 2 steals. Yet, the item which stands out as particularly impressive: five assists.

Watching the Michigan game — and watching UCLA’s offense in general — is instructive because Betts naturally commands so much attention as a skilled low-post player with the size needed to play over the top of a smaller defender. Michigan, like other teams, naturally tries to double-team Betts whenever possible and get the ball out of her hands. The five assists were important in the Michigan game because it is so hugely important for Betts to be able to pass out of double-teams and find cutters. Being able to do this consistently unlocks the rest of the UCLA offense because it tells opponents they will pay for double-teaming Betts.

Coach Cori Close did a good job of structuring the offense in the Michigan game to create cutting lanes when other Bruins, chiefly Betts, were doubled. With Betts dropping five dimes and Kiki Rice handing out 10 assists, it is clear that the UCLA offense was intent on finding the open player with the pass, cutting to the basket, and creating purposeful off-ball movement.

When UCLA scores 86 points, the Bruins are extremely unlikely to lose. Lauren Betts’ passing is a huge part of that.

USC women’s basketball hammers Nebraska with familiar second-half blitz

29-3 run against Michigan on Sunday. 32-9 run vs Nebraska on New Year’s Day. This USC team is learning how to turn it up and turn it on in second halves.

This looked awfully familiar for USC women’s basketball. Didn’t we in fact see this just 67 hours earlier, on Sunday night? USC was locked in a close game midway through the third quarter. Then it locked down on defense and sped away from an opponent which simply could not keep up. This is what happened on Sunday night against Michigan. It happened again on Wednesday versus Nebraska in a New Year’s Day matinee game.

Sunday against Michigan, USC was roped into a slugfest against the Wolverines but then used a 29-3 run in 9:40 to break the game open and ultimately win by 20 points, 78-58.

Wednesday versus Nebraska, USC had a small lead of just three points a few minutes into the third quarter. Then USC’s boa constrictor-level defense smothered the Husker offense. Nebraska scored just nine points in the next 14 minutes. USC went on a 32-9 run to take a 71-45 lead. It won by 20, 75-55.

Tough game for two halves. Third-quarter surge. Massive run. Win by 20.

USC simply turned on the defense and piled up JuJu Watkins free throws in the third quarter to create a second-half runaway.

JuJu Watkins made 10 free throws in the third quarter on Sunday versus Michigan. She made nine in the third quarter on Wednesday versus Nebraska.

Sunday against Michigan, USC shut out its opponent for the first 4:40 of the quarter. Wednesday against Nebraska, USC shut out its opponent for the first 6:09 of the quarter.

These games weren’t exact replicas, but they sure were close enough to notice. The USC second-half blitz did the job again.

Now USC goes on the road. The Trojans face Rutgers Sunday night in New Jersey on Big Ten Network at 5 p.m. Los Angeles time.