COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Southern California’s women’s basketball seemed to be having an off night. It was understandable.
No. 7 Maryland, and many of 14,735 fans who showed up at Xfinity Center, were throwing everything they had at No. 5 USC: Driving and spinning layups, quick floaters and jumpers in the lane and the urgency of a team playing to stay undefeated.
But, trailing 68-61 with about five minutes to play, the Trojans felt a calm come over them. It has been with them all season.
‘We just kind of have this unwavering confidence in ourselves,’ says JuJu Watkins, a sophomore guard and national player of the year candidate for USC.
‘A lot of it comes from the games you’ve already been through in tough moments in those big games. So I think that we had a lot of confidence in ourselves and what we work on every day, and it was just a matter of coming together and closing the game out.’
Watkins and Kiki Iriafen each had 21 points and to help spearhead Southern Cal’s 79-74 win that handed Maryland its first loss of the season. But the win seemed to mean much more than that.
‘I got a really nice text from our director of marketing at home saying that your team provided us a good two hours of not thinking about kind of what’s going on,’ says Trojans coach Lindsay Gottlieb. ‘And I think without really knowing it, that’s what this team does, right?
‘We have a perspective that basketball isn’t everything, but when these 40 minutes are in front of us, it’s everything to us in that moment. And I think that gives people, maybe a sense of being able to take their mind off harder things and have some good ones.’
Southern California (15-1, 5-0 Big Ten) was coming off a 92-42 win last Sunday before a sellout crowd at Rutgers. It was much tougher sledding against Maryland (14-1, 4-1), which has recharged with seven transfers after a rare NCAA Tournament miss last season under Brenda Frese.
One of them, Kaylene Smikle, who arrived this season from Rutgers, scored 14 of her 16 points in the second half to help guard Shyanne Sellers (game-high 26 points) mount a serious upset bid.
Watkins, meanwhile, who scored more points her initial collegiate season than Caitlin Clark did as a freshman, began missing five of her first seven shots. She struggled to find a rhythm all night and turned the ball over eight times, tying her second-highest total this season.
But Southern Cal managed to slow Maryland from its transition game, where the high-energy Sellers can score at will, and began to move the ball around freely to find open shooters and cutters.
Watkins or a teammate consistently found Iriafen, a 6-3 forward and transfer from Stanford, who drove and made a left-handed layup and was fouled with 1:28 left. She made her free throw to give USC the lead for good, 75-72.
The play was assisted by Rayah Marshall, who then delivered a key block of Sellers on Maryland’s ensuing possession. Marshall finished with four blocks and 15 rebounds.
‘She has a magnetism,’ Gottlieb says of Marshall. ‘I think the team believes in her so much. She’s kind of the energy giver to other people. She’s a little bit under the weather, fought through it. I challenged her a bit at halftime because (Maryland’s Christina) Dalce, I thought, was getting to the boards. And she just can own it and take messages, and do what we need her to do. I mean, the block she had at the end, the ability to kind of be a playmaker for us and put (Watkins and Iriafen) in action. She can pass and find them off it.
‘She’s been terrific and is just a huge part of any success that we’re having.’
Watkins, who entered the game third in the country at 25.1 points per game, stayed aggressive as well. She picked up her fourth foul, to loud applause, with 6:44 left in the game. But she nailed a jumper from the top of the key and hit two free throws in the final three minutes to help seal the win.
Iriafen and Watkins have scored in double digits in all 16 of USC’s games this season.
‘Every time we show up with these two young women here,’ Gottlieb said, sitting between Watkins and Iriafen after the game, ‘we know we’ve got the best duo in the country. Other teams are going to make things hard for them.
‘They were both in foul trouble, and I thought they led us. They had composure, they made plays they’re supposed to make and also empowered their teammates to do what they did to help us get get this win. It’s a really big win on the road for our program.’
Gottlieb, in her fourth season as Trojans coach, led USC to its second tournament title in Pac-12 in 2024. In its final season in the conference, the team reached the Elite Eight behind Watkins’ 920 points, which set a school season record.
USC fell to Connecticut in the step before the Final Four in 2024, but on Dec. 21, it got its first win over UConn in program history in its first trip to the East Coast this season.
That game drew nearly 16,000 fans. Wednesday’s mostly pro-Maryland crowd had just over 14,000. It was boisterous on a night a game tipped off after 8:30 in the aftermath of a snowstorm that hit the region this week.
“I definitely think we learned a lot about ourselves,’ says Frese, who is in her 23rd season at Maryland and gone 596-161 at the school. ‘And this group wants the moment. They want to play the best. And as a coach, I mean, you really love that, and you love seeing them welcome this big stage tonight.
“To get over 14,000 fans here for a late tip on a weeknight, really speaks volumes to our game and shows what tremendous fans that we have.”
Before the game, Frese spoke with Gottlieb and offered her support to her and families in Los Angeles, where USC now returns to play Penn State Sunday.
‘We’ve been on the road for whatever it is now, five days, and our city is on fire,’ Gottlieb says. ‘It’s been hard to be away and watch those scenes. So just want to send our thoughts and prayers to the first responders, to those impacted, and I have friends that have been displaced, and I know that our players probably do, too. So that’s more important than what we’re doing.’