USC women’s basketball is making headlines in the town of Los Angeles after No. 2 Stanford changed the season on Sunday, delivering a major upset to the program. The Pac-12’s favorite and its equation-changing results against the national college basketball giants mark the true arrival of the USC Women’s Hoops under her coach Lindsay Gottlieb.
USC has a great chance to host the 2023 Women’s NCAA Tournament, but there’s still a lot of work to do. The bigger point is that with No. 1 National Recruit Juju Watkins joining next season, the Trojans are well on their way to becoming a massive program again. Given the quality of the Pac-12, USC was not expected to be a factor in Gottlieb’s first year. Getting the program to this point midway through its second year is ahead of schedule for Gottlieb. This is a very exciting development worth watching.
We’re developing and deepening coverage of women’s basketball here at Trojans, so if you haven’t followed this team closely, let me show you how fast this team is.
One detail about this team is that it can either amuse or annoy you, depending on how you think.
Yes, defense. USC knows how to play round ball defense. I just couldn’t do the same with the griddle.
How well is USC performing in the defensive end? Get this: The Trojans — 13-4 on the season — have allowed 62 or more points just once in 17 games this season. Even in two games against 15-team UCLA, the Trojans have not allowed more than 61 points. In 10 of his 17 games for USC (the majority), USC has not allowed him 50 or more points.
Women’s college basketball games are divided into quarters. Having him lose 20 points in the quarter is a bad defensive quarter for any team. USC allows him 17 games, or 68 quarters, of which he only has 6. USC basically plays his quarter bad defensively once every 11 or 12 quarters he plays. It produced far more sub-10-point quarters for every 20-point quarter USC allowed. This represents a good defensive performance. .
USC allowed less than 10 points in 14 of 68 quarters. This is more than double the amount of 20-point quarters allowed by USC. USC simply wins the game at the end of that floor with very few defensive lapses.
If an opponent scores 15 points in a quarter (which equates to 30 points in a half and 60 points in a full game), they are outperforming most of USC’s opponents so far this season. increase. Wow. This shows how good USC he is on the defensive side of the floor.
Maybe Lincoln Riley should take notes.
USC Women’s Basketball and USC Football are similar in that they have unbalanced programs and rely heavily on one side of the ball for production and success. If USC, averaging 66.6 points per game, shoots less than 40% from the field, less than 34% from 3-point shots, and just 72% from the free-throw line, they’re out of the ordinary. You can even slightly improve your shot count. Raise the ceiling significantly. A 2% increase in his field goals, 3-pointers and free throws would have meant a victory over UCLA where he lost in two close games. Imagine USC going 15-2 instead of 13-4. The Trojans are his NCAA Tournament rock and will be a top-seeded team in potential first-round games. As it stands, if we can hit that 2% increase in him over the next few weeks, we’ll be in pretty good shape.
