Everyone knew that USC wouldn’t be the same without JuJu Watkins. Watkins is currently rehabbing an ACL tear she suffered during last year’s NCAA tournament. Without her, USC’s chances to compete for a national championship were vastly diminished, and some of the team’s performances against good opponents only further highlighted how much the team still has to work on.
After suffering an 80-46 loss to UCLA that Lindsay Gottlieb called “embarrassing,” USC gave up a 17-point lead to Oregon and fell 66-71. The loss highlighted how much USC still has to learn. It also highlighted the fact that this season isn’t truly about competing for a national championship. It’s about developing the many freshmen and sophomores on the roster, especially Jazzy Davidson and Kennedy Smith, so they are ready to help lead a winning team once Watkins is back.
Losses like the ones to UCLA and Oregon are often a part of the process, but that doesn’t make them any less frustrating.
Lindsay Gottlieb didn’t mince her words after the loss to Oregon
No coach is ever going to be happy when their team blows a 17-point lead. So, hearing a brutal assessment from Lindsay Gottlieb in the postgame media availability wasn’t much of a surprise.
“From my standpoint: about as upsetting a loss as we’ve had in this building,” Gottlieb said. “I told the players that’s on me, that’s on us. It was gross in every way. The way we handled when we had a lead, the way we handled when they were cutting into our lead.”
USC got off to a hot start, outscoring Oregon 23-9 in the first quarter. The second quarter was much closer, but USC won it with a two-point edge and went into the second half with a 37-21 lead. Oregon owned the second half, outscoring USC 24-21 in the third quarter and 26-8 in the fourth to claim the comeback win.
USC struggled to get the offense going in the fourth quarter. In the first five minutes, Londynn Jones scored her team’s only six points. The only other player to score all quarter long was Jazzy Davidson. As if that offensive breakdown wasn’t bad enough, USC also struggled to replicate its stifling defense from earlier in the game. Oregon got a couple of layups and a flurry of 3-pointers from Ari Long to catch up with USC.
The rest of the month won’t get much easier, as USC still has games against Maryland, Michigan State, Michigan, and Iowa coming up. The real litmus test of how much the team has grown and learned over the last stretch of the season will be a rematch against UCLA in early March.