Tag: Rayah Marshall

Rayah Marshall and Kaitlyn Davis are playing their best for USC women’s basketball

Rayah Marshall and Kaitlyn Davis are hitting their stride for USC as March arrives. Good timing.

For most of the season, USC women’s basketball has been carried by its starting backcourt of JuJu Watkins, McKenzie Forbes, and Kayla Padilla. While those three players all played important roles in helping USC beat Arizona on Thursday in Tucson, the frontcourt tandem of Rayah Marshall and Kaitlyn Davis carried most of the workload for the Trojans.

Marshall and Davis both posted season-high point totals to pick up the slack on a night when their backcourt teammates weren’t shooting well from 3-point range. It’s true that USC tied this game late in regulation on a 3-pointer, and then broke a tie in the second overtime with a 3-pointer, but it was the gruntwork of Davis and Marshall which put USC in position to make those key shots.

Let’s go into greater detail about Marshall and Davis, the frontcourt which is stepping up at just the right time this season:

JuJu Watkins and USC, without Rayah Marshall, beat No. 2 UCLA, move to 13-1

JuJu Watkins played like a superstar and USC gave No. 2 UCLA its first loss of the season. This program has arrived.

USC learned just before its massive women’s basketball game against No. 2 UCLA on Sunday that elite defender-rebounder Rayah Marshall would not play. She was sick. She obviously wanted to play but got derailed by illness. It was a horrible stroke of luck, and it was easy for the Trojans to think they were in huge trouble against an unbeaten UCLA team which had looked like a juggernaut for most of the season. That UCLA team also gave USC its only loss of the campaign.

The Trojans had to try to put up a fight. They waited all week for this game, having not played since last Sunday. Not having a game on Friday night did leave USC’s players — the ones healthy enough to play — very fresh.

That mattered, but mere energy isn’t enough. USC had to tend to its assignments and make a ton of key plays under pressure against a UCLA squad likely to be a No. 1 seed in March Madness.

The Trojans answered the bell, scoring a huge 73-65 win before a packed house at the Galen Center.

Let’s take you through some of the key details of the game and look ahead a little, after the Trojans made a huge national — and local — statement to the Bruins:

Lindsay Gottlieb, Rayah Marshall have big goals and bigger dreams for USC

It’s very exciting to contemplate how much Rayah Marshall, already a very good #USC player, can grow in the next year.

USC women’s basketball will have two centerpiece players on next season’s roster, not including a likely group of incoming transfers who will want to play for head coach Lindsay Gottlieb and assistant coach Beth Burns.

While Gottlieb is hard at work in the transfer portal, bringing in seasoned components of what should become an even more complete roster, she knows she will have two cornerstones to build around. One is incoming star freshman Juju Watkins. The other is Rayah Marshall, who was a walking double-double machine for USC this past season. Marshall — at 6-foot-4 — was a force for USC on the glass and as a rim protector. The sophomore averaged 12.7 points and 11.5 rebounds per game this past season, all while blocking 3.5 shots per contest.

One could say that Marshall is already a great player, but Gottlieb knows Marshall can evolve even more. Getting Marshall to maximize her potential is important. Crucially, Marshall is willing to let Gottlieb and the rest of the staff push her toward true greatness:

“She’s been coachable, she wants to be great, she allows us to push her,” Gottlieb said about Marshall. “She got a taste of it tonight (vs South Dakota State in the NCAA Tournament). That can be a scary thing in a good way. She’s not happy with the feeling and that’s going to drive her … her talent is limitless. We’re going to help make her into one of the best players she can be, one of the best players in the country.”

If Marshall becomes profoundly better next season, chiefly in terms of finishing more plays near the basket and becoming a more polished offensive force, USC’s ceiling will rise.

The thought of having Watkins on the perimeter and Marshall in the paint gives USC elite inside-outside balance and talent, a tremendous foundation for an improving program with increasingly bigger dreams of what’s possible.

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Rayah Marshall reminds everyone why USC defense will remain elite

#USC is a well-coached defensive team. It’s a group effort. Yet, Rayah Marshall takes care of so many problems for the Trojans.

The USC Trojans didn’t win in their first-round NCAA Tournament game on Friday against South Dakota State. It wasn’t for a lack of effort, especially from Rayah Marshall. She did all she could to lift the Trojans to victory.

Yes, she missed five free throws and did not shoot as well as she would have liked, but basketball can be carved into two components: shooting, and everything else. Some days, the ball might not go through the hoop, but effort is something every player can control. Marshall’s effort is always supreme, and it’s why she is such a great defensive player.

Marshall delivered 17 points, 13 rebounds, 7 blocked shots, 3 steals, and an assist in a wonderful performance. Marshall anchored a defense which held South Dakota State 34.4 points below its season average in a per-40 minute context, 17.4 below its season average if we include the full game (with the overtime period).

Marshall, just a sophomore, will be back on next season’s team. A 15-point, 12-rebound, six-block, 3-steal game was commonplace for her (not the exact numbers, but having a double-double with over five blocks plus some steals on the stat sheet) this past season. There’s no reason to think it won’t be next season. With more and better offensive players coming into the program, Marshall should have more room to operate on offense, making the game more manageable for her, and ensuring that she can continue to excel on defense.

The future is bright for USC for a lot of reasons, one of them named Rayah Marshall.

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Rayah Marshall named a Naismith Defensive Player of the Year semifinalist

USC sophomore Rayah Marshall was named a semifinalist for the Naismith DPOY award.

The USC Trojans women’s basketball team is heading into the Pac-12 Tournament all but locked into the field of 68. A couple of wins this week will improve their seed, and the turnaround from Londay Gottlieb’s team has been fantastic.

One bright spot has been Rayah Marshall, who was named as a Naismith Women’s College Defensive Player of the Year semifinalist in what has been a strong season for her.

Here is the full list of semifinalists:

  • Brea Beal, South Carolina
  • Aliyah Boston, South Carolina
  • Cameron Brink, Stanford
  • Brooke Flowers, St. Louis
  • Taiyanna Jackson, Kansas
  • Elizabeth Kitley, Virginia Tech
  • Aneesah Morrow, DePaul
  • Angel Reese, LSU
  • Celeste Taylor, Duke

Marshall has been terrific all season for USC. She is averaging 12.5 PPG with 8.9 rebounds. She is only a sophomore, too.

The Trojans begin the Pac-12 Tournament with a game Wednesday night against the Oregon State Beavers, and while that’s usually a good matchup, the Beavers just stunned Arizona on Saturday night to finish out the regular season.

If Marshall plays well over the Pac-12 Tournament and the NCAA Tournament, she could end up as a finalist for this award.

Here’s an example of how active Marshall is on the defensive end.

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USC’s Rayah Marshall plays one of the best games of 2023 in women’s basketball

#USC’s Rayah Marshall was the epitome of the #FightOn ethos in the win over Washington. She was incredible: 8 blocked shots, 5 steals, 16 rebounds. Wow!

The easy temptation when evaluation basketball players is to view them primarily through one prism alone: How many points did they score? It’s natural and understandable to connect a player’s value to the number of points she or he scores, or to the percentage of shots she or he makes. To be perfectly candid, it’s the first thing I look at when I flip to a box score.

That said, plenty of players prove — over and over again — that scoring points is hardly the only way to dominate games, win championships, and transform a basketball team.

Draymond Green is the ultimate example in modern professional basketball. Setting screens, talking on defense, guarding all five spots on the floor, rebounding, getting deflections and steals — Draymond does all the dirty work and forms a cornerstone piece of the Golden State Warriors’ championship empire. Without him, the Splash Brothers wouldn’t be able to do their thing. The whole operation wouldn’t work.

USC’s Rayah Marshall is the person most responsible for USC’s 63-54 overtime win over Washington on Sunday in Seattle.

She scored nine points.

The scoring wasn’t the point. Marshall did everything else for USC.

Grabbing 16 rebounds? That’s pretty good, even great. Yet, it wasn’t the most impressive thing about her performance.

How many players — women or men, college or pro — have blocked eight shots and collected five steals in the same basketball game? Marshall did that plus the 16 boards and the nine points. It truly was an all-time-great performance, and USC needed every last one of those blocks, steals and boards to fend off Washington in a game which went to overtime.

Rayah Marshall embodies the ultra-tough, never-back-down USC defense which is lifting this team into the NCAA Tournament. The Trojans aren’t a lock to make the tourney, but they’re moving in the right direction, all because they know how to lock down opposing offenses.

Rayah Marshall led the charge against Washington, dominating a game without scoring 10 points.

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