Preview: USC
USC comes to Maples Friday evening at 7pm in a game televised on Pac 12 Networks. With all the drama over UCLA and the Sunday game (ESPN2), we need not to look past an extremely talented Trojan team that beat us a year ago.
USC is 14-4 overall. But all 4 losses have been in conference, leaving USC at 4-4 and tied for 6th place after being swept by the mountain schools, splitting with UCLA, and losing to Washington last weekend.
USC was ranked 11th before last weekend’s loss and just sank to 15th. Their NET has dropped to 18, and Massey has them at 20. Their best wins have been over Ohio State, Oregon State, and UCLA, and their worst loss by far was the recent loss to Washington which we know is a good team, having beaten us just last year. USC thus seems inconsistent but capable of beating very good teams.
USC’s dominant player is freshman guard 6’2” freshman Juju Watkins. She is every bit as agile and quick as shorter guards, and is too tall for the vast majority of them to defend. Thus she creates a height mismatch on smaller guards and a quickness mismatch on forwards. She is a little like Haley Jones if Jones could shoot the three at 35%. As a result, this freshman is leading in many stat categories and is averaging 26 ppg. That is an average, which means she has had some monster games much higher than that, including 4 that were above 30 points. The worst games she has had all year were 15 points and 17 points—no one has really been able to stop her.
USC has two other players scoring in double digits, too. The second leading scorer is Harvard transfer MacKenzie Forbes. Forbes is 6’0” grad student forward/guard who shoots 38% of her treys but drives and slashes from all over the court. She is a well rounded and versatile player averaging nearly 14ppg. I'm very impressed with her play. While an Ivy leaguer, being a four year starter has done a lot for her maturity and fluidity as a basketball player. She drives and splits defenders quite well when she isn't bombing from the outside.
Brink and Iriafen are quite familiar with USC center 6’4” junior Rayah Marshall. Marshall averages about 10 ppg and 10 rpg—a double double, and anchors the center of the USC offense and defense. She is not just tall--she is strong and very physical and quite capable of pushing Brink around, as she did last year. A lot may depend on how the game is called. If it is Missy, expect a sumo match inside.
Kayla Padilla, a 5’9” grad student guard, has been their 4th starter. She is USC’s second Ivy-League transfer, coming from Penn. Padilla is hitting 46% of her threes, in quantity.
Taylor Bigby, a 6’1” redshirt sophomore guard who transferred in a year ago from Oregon, has been the fifth starter. Bigby shoots 40% of her threes.
Last year we split our two games with USC. When we went to their place, we lost in an ugly defensive slugfest, Brink was 3/14, could barely get the ball inside, and jacked up 5 treys that all missed. We lost that game 46-55. When we got them at Maples later we slugged out a defensive win 50-47 but Brink again was held in check, going 4/12 for 12 points. Rayah Marshall is a very capable defender, and if we want to win we will need to keep both Brink and Iriafen in the game, since Marshall cannot defend them both simultaneously. The rest of the USC team, however, has changed dramatially, with the departure of defensive star Destiny Littleton and the addition of the ivy leaguers and Watkins. USC has a lot more offensive firepower than they did a year ago, and Gottlieb knows how to use Marshall to defend Brink.
Looking at this lineup, 4 of the 5 USC starters shoot the three quite well, which is a weapon USC traditionally had not had. That makes it difficult to double Watkins, when everyone else is a capable scorer.
On paper, USC does not have as many assists as one might think it should None of its players have a particularly good assist/turnover ratio, and Watkins is actually underwater. I presume this is because they do not need a lot of assists when Watkins can just manufacture her own shots seemingly at will.
USC, frankly, looks like it should be more formidable than UCLA. They did beat us a year ago. And yet they lost their last game—at home. Washington’s defense held Watkins to 19 points and Padilla to 20—on 6/9 three point shooting. No one else made it to double digits, and Washington shot 46% to USC’s 37%. So Washington won with defense, primarily. They also out rebounded them 39 to 24. That sounds like it should be our formula, too.
The real question is, who and how do we defend Watkins, and can we do it without leaving the other 4 open? I wonder if Agara might be an important factor on defense. She may have the height and agility to help control USC's freshman phenom. If so, we may see Nunu on Juju.
USC comes to Maples Friday evening at 7pm in a game televised on Pac 12 Networks. With all the drama over UCLA and the Sunday game (ESPN2), we need not to look past an extremely talented Trojan team that beat us a year ago.
USC is 14-4 overall. But all 4 losses have been in conference, leaving USC at 4-4 and tied for 6th place after being swept by the mountain schools, splitting with UCLA, and losing to Washington last weekend.
USC was ranked 11th before last weekend’s loss and just sank to 15th. Their NET has dropped to 18, and Massey has them at 20. Their best wins have been over Ohio State, Oregon State, and UCLA, and their worst loss by far was the recent loss to Washington which we know is a good team, having beaten us just last year. USC thus seems inconsistent but capable of beating very good teams.
USC’s dominant player is freshman guard 6’2” freshman Juju Watkins. She is every bit as agile and quick as shorter guards, and is too tall for the vast majority of them to defend. Thus she creates a height mismatch on smaller guards and a quickness mismatch on forwards. She is a little like Haley Jones if Jones could shoot the three at 35%. As a result, this freshman is leading in many stat categories and is averaging 26 ppg. That is an average, which means she has had some monster games much higher than that, including 4 that were above 30 points. The worst games she has had all year were 15 points and 17 points—no one has really been able to stop her.
USC has two other players scoring in double digits, too. The second leading scorer is Harvard transfer MacKenzie Forbes. Forbes is 6’0” grad student forward/guard who shoots 38% of her treys but drives and slashes from all over the court. She is a well rounded and versatile player averaging nearly 14ppg. I'm very impressed with her play. While an Ivy leaguer, being a four year starter has done a lot for her maturity and fluidity as a basketball player. She drives and splits defenders quite well when she isn't bombing from the outside.
Brink and Iriafen are quite familiar with USC center 6’4” junior Rayah Marshall. Marshall averages about 10 ppg and 10 rpg—a double double, and anchors the center of the USC offense and defense. She is not just tall--she is strong and very physical and quite capable of pushing Brink around, as she did last year. A lot may depend on how the game is called. If it is Missy, expect a sumo match inside.
Kayla Padilla, a 5’9” grad student guard, has been their 4th starter. She is USC’s second Ivy-League transfer, coming from Penn. Padilla is hitting 46% of her threes, in quantity.
Taylor Bigby, a 6’1” redshirt sophomore guard who transferred in a year ago from Oregon, has been the fifth starter. Bigby shoots 40% of her threes.
Last year we split our two games with USC. When we went to their place, we lost in an ugly defensive slugfest, Brink was 3/14, could barely get the ball inside, and jacked up 5 treys that all missed. We lost that game 46-55. When we got them at Maples later we slugged out a defensive win 50-47 but Brink again was held in check, going 4/12 for 12 points. Rayah Marshall is a very capable defender, and if we want to win we will need to keep both Brink and Iriafen in the game, since Marshall cannot defend them both simultaneously. The rest of the USC team, however, has changed dramatially, with the departure of defensive star Destiny Littleton and the addition of the ivy leaguers and Watkins. USC has a lot more offensive firepower than they did a year ago, and Gottlieb knows how to use Marshall to defend Brink.
Looking at this lineup, 4 of the 5 USC starters shoot the three quite well, which is a weapon USC traditionally had not had. That makes it difficult to double Watkins, when everyone else is a capable scorer.
On paper, USC does not have as many assists as one might think it should None of its players have a particularly good assist/turnover ratio, and Watkins is actually underwater. I presume this is because they do not need a lot of assists when Watkins can just manufacture her own shots seemingly at will.
USC, frankly, looks like it should be more formidable than UCLA. They did beat us a year ago. And yet they lost their last game—at home. Washington’s defense held Watkins to 19 points and Padilla to 20—on 6/9 three point shooting. No one else made it to double digits, and Washington shot 46% to USC’s 37%. So Washington won with defense, primarily. They also out rebounded them 39 to 24. That sounds like it should be our formula, too.
The real question is, who and how do we defend Watkins, and can we do it without leaving the other 4 open? I wonder if Agara might be an important factor on defense. She may have the height and agility to help control USC's freshman phenom. If so, we may see Nunu on Juju.
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