USC shakes off slow start and JuJu Watkins injury scare to rout UNC Greensboro
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JuJu Watkins winced, shaking her left hand, the collective basketball world holding its breath. The first 10 minutes of USC’s NCAA tournament debut had been disconcerting enough already. Errant passes sailed away. Makeable jumpers clanked away. And No. 16-seed North Carolina Greensboro, having promised to “shock the world,” was at the very least making life difficult on the top-seeded Trojans.
Then, their star sophomore went up for a rebound early in the second quarter and emerged from under the hoop wincing with pain, an image that inevitably conjured thoughts of the worst-case scenario.
Watkins eventually shook away the pain of a jammed finger. A smothering USC press eventually put a stop to Greensboro’s plucky start. And the Trojans eventually rolled through their first-round opponent with a convincing 71-25 win, moving on to the NCAA tournament’s second round where they’ll face ninth-seeded Mississippi State on Monday at 7 p.m. PDT.
“We had some rust to get off,” Watkins said. “Hopefully that’s all done with.”
Watkins still scored 22 points to lead USC but she battled through more pain to get there. After landing awkwardly in the third quarter, Watkins limped immediately to the locker room, only to return minutes later for the fourth quarter.
The matchup already was well in hand, begging the question of why USC coach Lindsay Gottlieb risked further injury by playing Watkins. Gottlieb, when asked about that decision, said she trusted the judgment of Watkins and USC’s trainers, who all said she was good to go.
Watkins limped into the postgame news conference before reiterating that she was “all good.”
“It’s the end of the season,” she said. “Body’s a little banged up but on to the next. Nobody really cares, so on to the next.”
USC ultimately didn’t need Watkins at her best to get past the Spartans. It wouldn’t need much offense at all, really. Not with a dominant defense that gave up just four field goals after the first quarter.
It didn’t start that way, though. The Trojans looked nothing like a No. 1 seed with Final Four aspirations in the first quarter. They were sloppy with the ball, committing three turnovers in the first three minutes. They struggled to exploit their significant size advantage on the inside or knock down much of anything from the perimeter. Two minutes into the second quarter, their lead stood at two points.
“We haven’t played in two weeks,” Gottlieb said. “You’ve got to credit the other team for that a little bit for trying to take you out of a flow. And I think we also have to understand how to get ourselves in a flow when teams are trying to take things away from us.”
USC never really found that flow on offense. Outside of Watkins, it shot just 19 for 55 from the field. Kiki Iriafen, who was named a third-team All-American this week, didn’t score for the first 18 minutes and tallied just 13 points as Greensboro gave her trouble underneath. The Trojans also had 17 turnovers.
But their defense was so dominant from the second quarter on that the Trojans still could have won without scoring in the second half.
“Defense,” Gottlieb said, “was our calling card.”
That switch flipped early in the second quarter when Gottlieb turned to full-court pressure. With 6-foot-4 forward Rayah Marshall leading at the front of the press, USC completely suffocated the Greensboro offense, clogging up passing lanes and disrupting every possession. Marshall finished with seven blocks and two steals.
Greensboro didn’t score from the field in the second quarter as it struggled to get the ball past half-court. In the third quarter it hit a single three-pointer — and nothing else.
By that point the Trojans already were emptying their bench and rolling to the second round. Their defense gave up only 17 points after that frustrating first quarter. Greensboro shot a meager 13% from the field, the worst rate by any USC opponent this season, while its 25 points were the second fewest in a women’s NCAA tournament game, just four from the record.
Such an uneven effort by USC might not fly going forward, not with more talented teams on their path to a possible Final Four. But for one afternoon, a dominant defense was more than enough to move on.
