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.
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