Sometimes, teams simply catch fire.
That is exactly what happened on a cloudless Saturday morning when the No. 2 USC Trojans women’s water polo team defeated the No. 15 Indiana Hoosiers by a score of 21-12. The two Olympians, graduate center Tilly Kearns and freshman attacker Emily Ausmus, had five goals each and were a major factor in the Trojan’s game-defining 12-0 run.
The tirade began with six minutes remaining in the second period and extended through the middle of the fourth period before Indiana could finally get back on the board, but by that point, the damage had already been done.
The run started with Ausmus scoring her second goal before Kearns tallied the next two in a row within a minute and a half of each other. Ausmus would strike once more with three seconds remaining on the clock in the first half to send the Trojans into halftime up 11-7.
After the game, Ausmus discussed the importance of pushing in transition and the counter-attacking scenarios to keep scoring.
“I think we’re really good at pushing the counter-attack with our speed, getting up, getting advantages,” Ausmus said. “I think it’s a collective… at the end of the day it’s not one person who scores or one person who did something well, it’s a collective.”
Despite it certainly being a team game, Ausmus and Kearns were the driving forces for USC’s monumental victory over the Hoosiers.
The duo continued imposing their dominance, with Ausmus scoring 40 seconds into the third period to keep USC’s momentum rolling. Sophomore center Rachel Gazzaniga would also hit the back of the net before sophomore attacker Ava Stryker would score on a 5-meter attempt — one of four that the Trojans would convert. Freshman attacker Ava Knepper scored her 13th goal of the season to push USC’s lead to eight goals at the end of the third period.
To start the first, Gazzaniga got back on the board, followed by Kearns on another 5-meter attempt. Both 2-meters have been extremely useful so far this season in bringing pressure down low, which opens up the shooting opportunities on the perimeter for any of the numerous sharpshooters for USC.
One of these sharpshooters for USC is junior attacker Morgan Netherton, who followed Kearns’ goal with two of her own — the final goals of the Trojans' monstrous run.
The Hoosiers would break the two-period scoring drought with a goal on the powerplay, the only answer they had for USC basically the entire game. The one weak spot in a pool of near perfection? The Trojans had 15 exclusions in total, but were only punished on five. After the game, head coach Casey Moon talked about the large amount of exclusions that the team gave up during the game.
“I think that just comes in the nature of how we play,” Moon said. “We’re a really press-dominant team, I think that’s the identity of who we are. We want to play in [their] faces and we’re going to give up exclusions… a few of those are just lazy on our end, not really closing out… but how we want to play, we’re going to play aggressive and that’s [something] we will live with.”
The Trojans will now look ahead to the Aztec Invitational next week, when USC will likely have a few fun matchups against teams they normally don’t face.
“We play four quality teams from the East Coast, which is really good,” Moon said. “So it’ll be another challenge for us… our ultimate goal is to be 1-0 every week, and we did that this week which is great. Now we have an opportunity next week, so we will see how it goes.”
USC will play their first game on Friday at San Diego State University.