LOS ANGELES — Lindsay Gottlieb learned, five years ago, not to micro-manage. To avoid over-coaching. This was her first foray into the NBA, where loose offensive sets and general simplistic flow abounded, and when she first arrived in Cleveland as an assistant on John Beilein’s staff Gottlieb was confused as to when exactly the Cavaliers practiced.
This was not college basketball, where Gottlieb had grown, spending the previous eight seasons as the Cal women’s head coach. After fall training camp, in the NBA, teams didn’t much practice again. She was confused, at first. When do we go over scouting reports?
“And my colleagues were like, ‘No, you gotta get better in the games,’” Gottlieb recounted Friday afternoon, after USC’s 81-50 victory over Santa Clara. “‘Like, they have to evolve through games.’”
For two years, Gottlieb has installed pro-style principles to both her offensive system and her culture at USC, a natural fit for a program teeming with pro-ready athletes. And for two weeks, since a slop-fest of a 68-66 season-opening victory over Mississippi in Paris, USC has visibly evolved though games during a 4-0 start as aspirations continue to build. The Trojans returned to a cushy homestand, with games against three programs in Cal Poly, CSUN and Santa Clara that Gottlieb praised but acknowledged USC had “superior talent” over, and she issued her players a challenge ahead of a showdown with sixth-ranked Notre Dame next Saturday.
Did they want to simply show up? Or did they want to improve in-game?
“We’re better than we were,” Gottlieb asserted Friday afternoon, “when we got off the plane from Paris.”
After coughing up the ball 26 times against Ole Miss, the Trojans cut their turnovers to 14 in a 90-35 rout of Cal Poly. Three days later, on Tuesday night, they set a program record for points – and a USC basketball record, men’s or women’s – for margin of victory in a 124-39 obliteration of CSUN. On Friday afternoon, Gottlieb challenged a swarming group of lanky defenders to limit Santa Clara top scorer Olivia Pollerd to single-digit points; she finished with 12 on 4-of-14 shooting.
“Every game counts,” sophomore JuJu Watkins said firm, postgame, “regardless of who we play.”
Watkins’ further refinement as an offensive engine has been paramount. With 6:47 left in the third quarter, she stuck a foul-line jumper for another slice of history: becoming the fastest player in program history to reach 1,000 points, doing so in just 38 games, tied for the second-fewest games to the mark in NCAA Division I history (and two games quicker than former Iowa star Caitlin Clark, who holds the Division I career points record).
The milestone was treated with hardly more than a postgame admonishment of gratitude from Watkins, a sophomore whose trophy case already threatens to overflow. Gottlieb was more bullish.
“It is really cool when there are things like this that pop out,” Gottlieb said postgame, “and you’re like, ‘Woah, it was that fast?’”
More impactful, though, is Watkins’ visible in-game improvement in reading defenses, a major emphasis of her summer work with longtime trainer Phil Handy. After nine turnovers against Ole Miss – which Gottlieb said she would take “some of the heat” for Friday – the incendiary sophomore has averaged five assists against 1.7 turnovers in her three games since, playing both with improved poise and vision to find teammates for layups on the interior.
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“Reading the floor better,” Watkins said Friday. “I think that’s really kind of helped me limit that. And as the season progresses, will continue to kinda evolve in that aspect.”
Stanford transfer Kiki Iriafen showed continued offensive comfort on Friday, finishing with 20 points on 9-of-14 shooting and frequently spacing the floor from the midrange for dynamic inside-out looks with Watkins and center Rayah Marshall. Freshman Kennedy Smith swiped five steals for the second consecutive game, the figurehead of a swarming USC defense that has forced a combined 97 turnovers in its last three games.
USC’s new group, with a slew of multifaceted threats, is still “so far from where we want to be,” Gottlieb said. And yet, three straight 30-point blowouts and marked improvement later, and their nonconference foes see greatness in these Trojans.
“I’ve had really kind coaches on opposing sides,” Gottlieb said Friday of USC’s latest stretch, “when they shake hands, say, ‘Now, go win it all.’”