Tag: USC women’s basketball

The USC women’s basketball team entered Saturday’s game against No. 5 Notre Dame with a lot to prove. The Trojans did not play well in their season opener against Ole Miss. Could they deliver a sharper, crisper performance against an elite opponent on national television at home in the Galen Center?

It’s true that USC was missing star freshman Kennedy Smith, who — it was revealed on Saturday, before tipoff — would not play in this game and will miss an extended period of time due to an undisclosed medical procedure. Just how much USC missed Smith on Saturday against Notre Dame is one of the big unknowns surrounding the Trojans. Yet, they still had JuJu Watkins, Kiki Iriafen, Talia von Oelhoffen, and Rayah Marshall. Notre Dame, meanwhile, was missing a number of players in its own right. Overall, the injury reports were — at worst for USC — even-steven.

Notre Dame was simply better than USC, by a lot. The Irish grabbed control of the game in the first quarter. USC pulled within three points a few times but rarely sustained a high level of play at both ends of the floor. USC’s defense did its job, holding the Irish to a mere 44 points in the game’s first 27 minutes.

The USC offense, however, fell well short, scoring a bunch of points only when the outcome had already been decided. USC managed just 47 points in the game’s first 36 minutes before a 14-point flurry in the last four minutes of regulation, only after Notre Dame pushed its lead close to 20 points.

The 74-61 final accurately reflected the extent of Notre Dame’s dominance, but if anything, both offenses fattened up in the last five minutes when game pressure evaporated.

How good was USC’s defense? The Trojans forced 20 Notre Dame turnovers and limited the Irish to 6-of-18 3-point shooting. That should be good enough to win most nights.

This was not most nights. USC’s offense coughed up 21 turnovers and made just 1 of 13 triples. JuJu Watkins scored 24 points, but needed 25 field goals to do so. Notre Dame star Hannah Hidalgo, the best player on the court, scored 24 points on 21 shots. Teammate Olivia Miles scored 20 on an efficient 7-of-12 clip from the field.

USC didn’t have a significant scorer to help JuJu Watkins on Saturday. Kiki Iriafen finished with 15 points, but she also needed a high volume of shots — 15 — to score those points. Iriafen was 5 of 15 from the field and missed a ton of shots near the rim, which not only denied USC points but made it easier for Notre Dame to continue to focus its defensive attention on JuJu, who rarely had space to operate.

USC coach Lindsay Gottlieb will need to create an offensive structure which opens up the game — and the floor — for JuJu Watkins. The Trojans also need to adjust to Kennedy Smith’s absence and get their other freshmen role players to play better as the season goes along.

Notre Dame could not have played a better game. The Irish looked like a Final Four team.

USC has a lot of work to do if it wants to meet the Irish in the Final Four. It’s back to the drawing board for Lindsay Gottlieb and the Trojans.

Visit our friends at Fighting Irish Wire, Buffaloes Wire, Ducks Wire, UW Huskies Wire and UCLA Wire.

It’s time for USC women’s basketball to lace up the sneakers and take the court at the Galen Center versus Notre Dame. The action starts just after 1 p.m. in Los Angeles on Saturday. The game will be shown on national television, with NBC getting the rights to this broadcast. We talked to Geoffrey Clark of Fighting Irish Wire about this game, focusing on each team’s best players, foremost strengths, and critical weaknesses.

Trojans Wire’s No. 1 USC strength? It could be JuJu Watkins — that’s a perfectly good answer — but we chose to focus on something else in our Q and A with Fighting Irish Wire:

 Defense. USC’s offense comes and goes, but if you look at the defense, it is always there. It has always been there this season. USC’s ceiling depends on the offense, but this team has such a high floor because the defense just doesn’t have many lapses. The Ole Miss game was a struggle for USC because the Rebels were able to get points off USC turnovers in transition before the Trojans could set up their halfcourt defense. USC’s offense might struggle again versus Notre Dame, but if the Trojans can set up their halfcourt defense, they’re going to at least stay close and give themselves a chance.

Check out our USC women’s basketball podcast with Geoffrey Clark and Fighting Irish Wire:

Visit our friends at Fighting Irish Wire, Buffaloes Wire, Ducks Wire, UW Huskies Wire and UCLA Wire.

The USC women’s basketball game against Notre Dame is a battle of top-five teams. USC is No. 3. Notre Dame is No. 5. What will offer a point of separation between the two teams on Saturday in the Galen Center? There are many possible answers. We’re all waiting to see which ones become the true indicators of where these teams stand and how well they currently match up against each other.

USC and coach Lindsay Gottlieb are hoping one decision makes a difference against Notre Dame: the schedule. USC played a very tough season-opening game against Ole Miss, a relentless defensive team which led USC by four points with just over two minutes left in regulation and fell to the Trojans by only two points. Notre Dame chose not to play a similarly formidable opponent before this USC game. The Trojans hope that getting tested and pushed by Ole Miss leaves them more prepared for this super showdown in Los Angeles.

If you look at this statistical compilation from Geoffrey Clark of Fighting Irish Wire, you will see that Notre Dame’s statistical leaders have bigger numbers in various categories than USC’s statistical leaders. That is a product of Notre Dame playing a softer schedule. Ole Miss depressed USC’s overall statistical output. The hope from the USC side is that when Notre Dame comes to the Galen Center, it will run into tough sledding after four relatively uncomplicated games to start its season.

Check out our podcast with Geoffrey Clark on USC women’s basketball versus Notre Dame:

Visit our friends at Fighting Irish Wire, Buffaloes Wire, Ducks Wire, UW Huskies Wire and UCLA Wire.

The Notre Dame women’s basketball team is dealing with several injuries as it heads to Los Angeles to play USC women’s basketball on Saturday in the Galen Center. Fighting Irish Wire staff writer Geoffrey Clark identified this as the Fighting Irish’s foremost limitation going into the game against USC:

“As deep as the Irish are, injuries perhaps have held them back from further success,” Clark told us. “They have numerous key players sidelined right now, which has stretched Niele Ivey’s rotation to its limit. Without reinforcements, it feels like only a matter of time before their available depth gets exposed because expecting their top healthy players to log a bunch of minutes every game becomes unrealistic after a while.”

On3 Sports reports that Notre Dame forward Liatu King is on track to play against USC. Several other prominent Notre Dame players won’t, as reporter Tyler Horka outlines here:

With Karlen sidelined in addition to graduate senior front-court mates Maddy Westbeld and Kylee Watson, the former recovering from offseason foot surgery and the latter rehabbing from knee surgery in the spring, and junior guard KK Bransford, who’s out for the year nursing a foot injury, Notre Dame has eight available players against the third-ranked team in the country this weekend.

King’s return should push Cassandre Prosper back to the bench, where she’ll be an option along with sophomore guard Emma Risch and senior guard Sarah Cernugel, a former walk-on. Prosper and Risch are coming off some stellar performances; Prosper is averaging 10.8 points and 5.5 rebounds per game while Risch, Notre Dame’s sharpshooter, has made six of her last nine three-point shots.

USC has the deeper bench and will therefore know that it has the better chance of wearing down the Fighting Irish in the final quarter.

Notre Dame might need a freshman to step up and play especially well if the Irish are to pull off the upset on the road. Here’s Clark on that freshman player:

Freshman Kate Koval quickly is establishing herself as the latest Irish star. She can do literally everything required of a post player, which is score, rebound and block. We’ll see how well she adjusts to better competition as her first collegiate season progresses as well as how other teams plan for her, but don’t be surprised if she has at least one triple-double, especially against an inferior opponent.

USC isn’t an inferior opponent, but the point remains that Koval might give Notre Dame a little more upside in this game than some experts think. Still, the lack of available players means Notre Dame could go with just a six- or seven-player rotation. The margins are smaller for the Irish than for USC.

Check out our podcast on USC women’s basketball versus Notre Dame:

Visit our friends at Fighting Irish Wire, Buffaloes Wire, Ducks Wire, UW Huskies Wire and UCLA Wire.