The age-old tale that defense wins championships is true — but Sunday’s matchup between the USC Trojans women’s basketball team and the Michigan Wolverines shows that offense sure does help too.
In front of 8,043 fans at Galen Center, USC beat Michigan handly 78-58, but it was only the fourth quarter of basketball that saw the Trojans pull ahead to the 20-point gap they would win by.
One of the huge factors why USC had such an electric final 10 minutes was because of graduate forward Kiki Iriafen coming back on the floor with only one foul to give. Iriafen got into foul trouble early, getting called for her fourth at the start of the second half. She sat the third quarter before putting up 12 points, a few rebounds and a block in the final quarter of the game before receiving an offensive foul to end her night.
Her efficiency — 18 total points in 21 minutes — was truly something that everyone marveled at, but head coach Lindsay Gottlieb focused on the ability of her guards.
“We know we can play four guards or two bigs,” Gottlieb said. “Tonight we were forced into the four guards, and I thought it worked out well for us… I thought everyone did what they needed to do.”
Led by sophomore guard JuJu Watkins with 31 points and seven assists, Gottlieb’s guards truly did step up to the task. After a somewhat shaky start, Watkins caught on fire in the second quarter with numerous pull-up jump shots from the midrange to keep USC in the game.
“I think anytime a great scorer has a slow start but can get to the free-throw line… that settles them down a lot,” Michigan head coach Kim Arico said. “Then she was kind of unstoppable.”
“It’s what I train,” Watkins said. “I think that’s always the goal, to simplify the game… For me, it was just adjusting to the team we are playing… Most of the time I use that first quarter to survey what the defense is doing and try to read the defense to the best of my ability. And then when I get the hang of it, it’s barbecue chicken from there,” in reference to Marquette’s Tyler Kolek’s viral comment last year.
Kayleigh Heckel, Avery Howell and Kennedy Smith, all of them freshman guards, played a huge factor in the win as well for the Trojans. Despite only combining for 14 points, the three seemed like the glue the team needed, making the Wolverines have to worry about them while also dealing with the two-headed snake that was Watkins and senior center Rayah Marshall throughout the entire game.
Toward the middle of the fourth quarter, the Trojans found themselves on a huge 26-6 run, which put them well ahead of the still-fighting Wolverines. After a drive and score from Iriafen, sophomore guard Malia Samuels got a steal and fed Howell in the corner which was officially the dagger, putting USC up by 21. The USC bench came to life and the Michigan bench, which had been active all night, looked deflated, saying everything about what the final four minutes would look like.
Freshman guard Syla Swords’ absence was one of the main reasons Michigan struggled on both sides of the ball. Postgame, senior guard Greta Kampschroeder and Arico both had comments about the value she brings to the team.
“Big playmaker. Big shot taker. She can hit some tough shots, and I think she’s kind of a calm presence on the court as well,” Kampshroeder said.
“She’s also an exceptional defender,” Arico added. “She’s our leading rebounder… so I just think that she gives us a presence on the defensive and rebounding… it was tough to not have her out there.”
Defensively, USC was very strong. The team moved to a full-court press defense in the second half of the game, which gave Michigan some major trouble and shut them out from fastbreak points entirely.
“We focus on transition defense all the time,” Gottlieb said. “It starts with our ‘ball stopper’... and in our press it’s our dog… We try to put pressure on the point of attack and sprint back and matchup… For the most part, when our players really buy into what the gameplan is, they are capable of anything.”
One of the players that was in the dog, or ‘mad dog,’ role as Gottlieb often refers to it was Marshall — not something you would typically see from a center. The positionless role relies on every single player, whether it be a big like Marshall or Iriafen to a tenacious defender like Samuels, to press at the opposition’s baseline to try and force a mistake. Marshall has done a great job in that role with three steals on the game and had a great game offensively as well. She finished with 15 points and also had five assists as well.