The USC women’s basketball team rolled to a 71-39 win over Rutgers on Sunday at Galen Center.
The Trojans (13-9, 5-6 Big Ten) got off to a slow start, ending the first quarter trailing by three points. Rutgers (9-13, 1-10) held the lead until the 5:39 mark in the second quarter when Kara Dunn hit a pair of free throws.
USC picked up its defensive pressure in the second quarter, which helped ignite its offense.
“We really turned up our energy. I think we were really trying to find our way,” Trojans coach Lindsay Gottlieb said. “I thought at halftime, we had to settle down and say we can have that energy and still make the right plays on offense, which I thought we did in the second half. I thought that our effort, energy and our will were there. We just were too sloppy in the first half, and then we settled down, shot the ball better, and were in more control.”
The Trojans held a six-point lead at halftime and extended it during a second-half surge.
Dunn led USC with 18 points and six rebounds. Jazzy Davidson contributed 16 points, nine rebounds and five assists, while Kennedy Smith added 11 points and four assists. Laura Williams anchored the glass with 11 rebounds and Malia Samuels finished with seven points and four rebounds.
“Laura is a tremendous athlete. She’s just a super terrific athlete, and she has really long arms and goes up and gets the ball, so she’s a really good offensive rebounder,” Gottlieb said. “I think that tonight in particular, we didn’t shoot it great, so there were a lot of opportunities. They were in a zone, so there’s nobody really boxing you out, and I thought she did exactly what she’s capable of doing in that sense. Laura, I thought, set a really good tone there — she rebounded both offensively and defensively.”
Imani Lester scored 11 points and grabbed six rebounds for Rutgers. Zachara Perkins recorded 12 points and four rebounds and Faith Blackstone added six points.
USC outscored Rutgers 23-8 in the third quarter and kept the pressure up in the fourth, outscoring the Scarlet Knights 19-8. The Trojans dominated the battle on the boards, 57-32. USC made the most of Rutgers’ 20 turnovers, scoring 21 points off the miscues.
“We’re a better team when we don’t throw it to the other team,” Gottlieb said. “We’re so good defensively that we really don’t want to give [our opponents] any easy possessions and transitions off turnovers, and I think we’re really capable offensively. So we just have to continue to value the ball, be sharp. We just wanna be able to pick apart any type of defense, whether it’s a press, whether it’s a man, whether it’s a sagging man, whether it’s a zone. We’ve got to keep building our offensive confidence and arsenal so we can win any which way.”
USC will look to extend its two-game win streak at Northwestern (8-14, 2-9) at 6 p.m. on Thursday. The game will air on the Big Ten Network.
