USC women’s basketball is setting a recruiting standard USC football should aspire to

USC WBB is setting the bar high in recruiting. Your move, Lincoln Riley.

The USC football program is almost outside the top 20 in national recruiting. The Trojans have been sliding in football recruiting ever since the Fourth of July weekend. Their momentum did not continue into the summer. They lost key recruitments, especially for linebacker Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa, who went to Notre Dame. The recruiting situation for football is concerning. The program which is setting the gold standard for recruiting at USC is the women’s basketball program.

In case you missed it, USC landed two five-star recruits a few weeks ago: Kennedy Smith and Kayleigh Heckel.

Smith chose USC over the other schools in her top five which included UCLA, South Carolina, Duke and Louisville. She hails from Etiwanda High School in Southern California, where she has helped lead the team to the California 2023 state championship. A versatile wing player who can handle the ball, shoot from outside and play in the post, Smith with strengthen the Trojans in many ways.

Kennedy Smith is viewed by some as the best two-way player in the 2024 high school recruiting class. The 6-1 wing is also among the most dynamic players in the 2024 cycle.

She can do almost anything on the basketball court, so the five-star prospect was an obvious target for coach Lindsay Gottlieb and her staff, especially with her ability to play multiple positions (point guard, shooting guard and small forward).

USC’s recruiting class for 2024 women basketball has a good chance of becoming a top-five class at the end of the cycle. The Trojans have also added Rian Forestier of San Antonio, Avery Howell from Boise, and Laura Williams from Fairfax, Virginia, all top-100 recruits with four-star rankings.

This is the standard other USC revenue-sport programs should aspire to.

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