LOS ANGELES — The Trojans will have to let us know if the fine print in the contract, arranging for Saturday’s “Real USC” game at Crypto.com Arena, specifies whether the loser will have to be referred to by something besides “USC” for the rest of the season.
If so, the No. 2 South Carolina Gamecocks’ coach Dawn Staley said her side called dibs on “USC” with a 69-52 victory over the No. 8 Southern California Trojans (2-1).
“We got the title – until we play ’em again next year,” Staley said, smiling slyly. “So until … next year in Greenville, we’re going to wear that title with pride. We are the ‘real USC.’”
USC– er, “Southern Cal,” as was written across the fronts of the Trojans’ gold jerseys Saturday – kept it respectable through three and a half quarters against the Gamecocks, last season’s national runners-up and again one of the leading candidates to challenge No. 1 Connecticut for national supremacy.
And anyone wondering what to make of the new-look Trojans during JuJu Watkins’ lost season?
Saturday told us that without their injured superstar, with Kiki Iriafen and Rayah Marshall gone to the WNBA and with Avery Howell and Kayleigh Heckel having transferred to Washington and UConn, respectively, what we can expect is that there will be wins but that there will also be growing pains.
There will be highlights and hiccups. Hard-fought steps forward and instructive steps back.
No, I wouldn’t make plans to see these Trojans in Phoenix for this season’s Final Four – but!
If Southern California can keep this young team mostly intact and give it a year, well, come back next season. Those Trojans will add another No. 1 recruit – Ohio’s Saniyah Hall just signed Wednesday – and they could really, finally bust down the door and they’ve been knocking on for the past couple seasons, eliminated both times in the Elite Eight.
Shoot, they could go to South Carolina and take back their “USC” moniker from the three-time national champs, too.
But as now constructed and currently acquainted, this group of Trojans has got some headroom to improve, some long Jazzy Davidson-esque strides to make – which is what Saturday’s game before a crowd of 8,150 fans was for, Trojans coach Lindsay Gottlieb said.
“We want these kinds of games, you know, to teach us where we need to be and where we need to get to,” Gottlieb said, who’s in her fifth season with the program. “And again, we wouldn’t know that if we’re blowing someone out by 40, so I’d rather get it handed to us tonight, even though it doesn’t feel good. And understand, you know, what we’re capable of doing and getting there eventually.”
The sooner the Trojans can bolster their rebounding (they were beaten on the boards, 56-32) and their offensive production (their 52 points Saturday were the fewest since the pre-Watkins era, when they lost 56-48 to Oregon State in the 2023 Pac-12 Conference Tournament), the faster they’ll get where they’re going.
Going against South Carolina’s long-limbed, aggressive defenders in her third college game, Davidson, the No. 1-ranked freshman recruit from Oregon, was held to a season-low eight points on 4-for-11 shooting.
The slender, 6-foot-1 guard had her moments; her coast-to-coast score in the first half had an animated Watkins doing jazz hands on the bench and her free-safety play defensively is going to give opponents headaches. But she was never expected to be the high-octane offensive engine that Watkins was right off the starting line.
JuJu jammed on the gas hard two seasons ago as a freshman. Six games into her college career, she’d already broken Lisa Leslie’s USC record for most 30-point games as a freshman, with four.
She was putting up numbers only LeBron James had in a six-game span – across all of professional and college basketball over the past 20 years: 161 points, 45 rebounds, 19 assists, 14 steals, eight blocked shots and, yes, the six victories.
Now, she’s out for the season with a torn ACL suffered in the second round of last season’s NCAA Tournament, but still contributing, not too cool to cheer on her mates – too cool not to.
The Trojans re-posted what one social media user – @RainyFocus – counted as Watkins’ very unofficial stats from the bench after the Trojans’ comeback to upset North Carolina State last weekend: 20 aggressive claps, 7 yelling, 10 pointing fingers, 12 aura farming flexing, 4 clap celly.
She had another big night on the bench Saturday, when she was among a handful of women’s basketball stars watching, including former USC champion-turned-Trojans-superfan Cheryl Miller, former Spark Candace Parker and former WNBA No. 1 pick Aliyah Boston, the Gamecock champion.
“[Watkins] is still a really big part of this team, so just hearing her voice and her supporting us is something that I value for myself and I know the team also values,” Kennedy Smith said, the sophomore who’s been thrust into a much more vocal leadership role this year, and who led the Trojans with 12 points Saturday.
“Her harping at us in practice, telling us right and wrong, is something that I appreciate.”
They’ll probably hear a lot from Watkins in the coming weeks and months, because a lot will go right and a lot will go wrong and the Trojans will hope to be better for it, stronger.
“I saw some things for our team I really liked,” Gottlieb said. “I thought we had to fight, some things to build on, but obviously we’re not yet where we need to be. But I think this game will really help us get there in an expedited fashion and I’m excited about what’s next for us.”