Jazzy Davidson<\/a>, the freshman guard out of Clackamas, Oregon. Davidson runs the offense with a green light to shoot while possessing great defensive capabilities \u2014 she has the most minutes played of any Trojan and leads the team in all major cumulative stats. She also leads the Big Ten in total blocks and blocks per game, with multiple four-block games across the season.<\/p>\nThe two-headed-transfer monster of senior guards Londynn Jones and Kara Dunn has often been representative of the squad at its best. Jones, who was a 3-point sniper at UCLA, has kept that same shooting ability at USC. She scored 28 points against Cal Poly (3-13, 1-5 Big West), the most of any Trojan in a game this season, and is tied for the 18th most treys in the Big Ten.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Dunn has arguably been the team\u2019s most valuable player; she and Davidson are the only players to have started all 16 games, and she\u2019s consistently shown up in otherwise disappointing losses. All three of Dunn\u2019s 20-point outbursts have come in bad USC losses \u2014 she shot 8-for-11 against No. 23 Notre Dame (12-4, 4-2 ACC), led both teams in scoring in a Jan. 6 loss against Oregon (14-4, 2-3) and dropped a season-high 27 points in Sunday\u2019s loss to Minnesota (12-4, 3-2).<\/p>\n
Issues abundant in Trojanland<\/p>\n
The Trojans have shown much promise: They were ranked in the Associated Press Top 25 poll for the first ten weeks of the season and beat multiple teams by 30 or more points. Additionally, they have standout wins to their name, like a close 59-50 defeat of then-No. 21 Washington, who solidly beat then-No. 6 Michigan (14-2, 5-1) on New Year\u2019s Day, or their snapping of then-No. 20 Nebraska\u2019s (14-3, 3-3) 12-game win streak to open the season.<\/p>\n
But this season\u2019s squad has problems. Namely, they don\u2019t have a convincing frontcourt, especially compared to last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Iriafen and Marshall were the yang to Watkins\u2019 yin: Marshall was a defensive stalwart, with the sixth-highest defensive rating in Pac-12 history and career averages of nearly 10 rebounds and 2.5 blocks to match. Iriafen, meanwhile, had a 0.525 shooting percentage over her collegiate career, which helped balance out Watkins\u2019 extensive shot diet while still having the third-most total points in the Big Ten last year.<\/p>\n
USC\u2019s current starting frontcourt of junior forward Gerda Raulu\u0161aityte and sophomore forward Vivian Iwuchukwu doesn\u2019t pack the necessary offensive or defensive punch. Neither do the Trojans\u2019 bench forwards like redshirt freshman Laura Williams or junior Yakiya Milton, who have seen limited playing time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the aforementioned UCLA matchup, the Bruins scored 46 points in the paint, with 14 of senior center Lauren Betts\u2019s 18 points being twos; meanwhile, Raulu\u0161aityte, Iwuchukwu, Williams, Milton and sophomore transfer Dayana Mendes shot a combined 1-for-13 from the field.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This lack of a paint presence has led the Trojans to run a very small-ball offense, driving what is arguably their biggest problem: shooting efficiency.<\/p>\n
USC has shot the sixth-most threes in the Big Ten so far, but its 3-point percentage of 0.316 is the fourth worst in the conference. This extends to its general shooting percentage, too; the team is currently shooting at a 0.402 clip, the second worst in the Big Ten, with only Rutgers (8-9, 0-6) below them. This isn\u2019t due to a small sample size, either, as the Trojans have taken the twelfth-most shots in the conference.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While USC shot season-highs of 14 threes on 0.452 shooting against Minnesota on Sunday, it has also had more games shooting under 0.250 than shooting over 0.400. Simply put, the team has the ability to shoot very well, but that ability is often in flux, with a lower-than-preferred baseline.\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, this can be partly explained by much of the team\u2019s lack of experience with the pace of collegiate basketball. Those who do have experience, namely Jones and Dunn, haven\u2019t experienced it under the teachings of Gottlieb. In time, they will likely gain the chemistry and confidence to shoot well in the cardinal and gold.<\/p>\n
The Trojans still have a lot to look forward to. When they\u2019re hitting their shots from beyond the arc, they can actively keep up with a team like UCLA \u2014 USC made six of its first eight shots from beyond the arc against the Bruins. It\u2019s no coincidence that USC kept the score within one as late as the middle of the second quarter.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Plus, due to the WNBA\u2019s eligibility rules, Watkins will need to return to the Trojans for her senior year, which will likely lessen Davidson\u2019s load and, by proxy, make the rest of the team\u2019s jobs easier.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Until then, though, the Trojans have a slate full of Big Ten games to play \u2014 and, maybe, a tournament to worry about. Their next game is at home against No. 12 Maryland (16-2, 4-2) on Thursday at 6 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"USC women\u2019s basketball Head Coach Lindsay Gottlieb defended her choice to schedule multiple games against championship-caliber programs at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412119,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-412118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}