Swanson: USC women’s basketball ‘exposed’ by Notre Dame

LOS ANGELES — Get JuJu some help!

Just kidding, just … kidding?

After steering the USC women’s basketball team to an Elite Eight berth last season, Trojans coach Lindsay Gottlieb loaded up on talent. Went and assembled an all-star cast to support superstar JuJu Watkins her sophomore season. Talk about depth of field, USC has rostered a constellation with talent as far as the eye can see.

Just not on Saturday. Notre Dame ruined that image, outclassing their hosts 74-61 in a nonconference game that pit schools with a traditional football rivalry against each other on the hardwood in the first of a home-and-home set.

And the No. 6 Fighting Irish, though depleted by injuries, are now 5-0. The No. 3 Trojans fell to 4-1.

Notre Dame stormed into Galen Center and put on a show for all the stars who came out among the 7,894 fans to watch the matinee, big names who included Snoop Dogg, Michael B. Jordan and Jason Sudeikis.

The Irish ran circles around USC in front of all the WNBA decision-makers filling the building. Before the national NBC audience who tuned in to see Watkins take on Hannah Hidalgo, both of whom made last season’s Associated Press All-American First Team as freshmen.

Who knows how many more times these women will meet in their college careers – let’s petition for many times – but for now, it’s Hidalgo 1, Watkins 0.

The Fighting Irish followed the game plan: Make life heck on Watkins. And so they did, sticking her with the 6-foot-1 Sonia Citron and 6-3 Cassandre Prosper and whoever else wanted to help. That included the sticky-fingered menace Hidalgo, who plays like your annoying little sibling, inserting herself in everything, everywhere all at once, and who in the end, was credited with five steals to go with her 24 points.

Even so, Watkins gave her team 24 points on 10-for-25 shooting. She still gave us her regular flashes of brilliance, step-throughs and pump fakes. She got on her jet ski in transition a couple times, trying, trying to lift her team onto the plane on which Notre Dame was playing.

But Gottlieb was right: “I never felt that we were playing great.”

Beside Watkins, the Trojans shot just 14 for 42. Collectively, they were 1 for 13 from 3-point range. They turned over the ball 21 times. They lost at home for the first time since November 2021. They never led.

And no one took the pressure off Watkins. No one knocked down timely open 3s. No one helped direct the action. No one really gave Watkins any help.

The much-heralded Kiki Iriafen, a graduate transfer from Stanford who last season was an Honorable Mention All-American and the Pac-12’s Most Improved Player, tallied 15 points on 5-for-15 shooting, but two of those makes came late, with the game out of reach.

Meanwhile, Olivia Miles – the Notre Dame guard and, like Iriafen, potentially the Sparks’ No. 2 selection in next year’s WNBA draft – left much more of an imprint on the game, with 20 points on 7-for-12 shooting, to go with eight rebounds and seven assists.

USC graduate transfer guard Talia von Oelhoffen, whose Oregon State Beavers eliminated Notre Dame in the NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 in March, equaled the 10 points per game she averaged in her first four full collegiate seasons on Saturday – but the Trojans needed more than that.

Freshman guard Kayleigh Heckel started Saturday in place of another freshman, Kennedy Smith, who will be sidelined indefinitely following a surgical procedure, USC reported. Heckel had six points, four rebounds and five of USC’s turnovers.

Watkins, who added another five turnovers, flipped over the box score during the postgame press conference so she couldn’t look at it anymore.

What had she been looking at? “How many mistakes.”

And it’s early yet, so it’s nothing but a kick in the pants for a team with tons of talent and goals to match.

“You don’t schedule this game because you think anything is going to be a 40-point win,” Gottlieb said. “You schedule it because you have an opportunity to have a great crowd and play well and give yourself an early-season signature win. Or you get exposed.

“I would have chosen Option 1 if it was my decision to make, but given that it’s Option 2, our only choice is be exposed, stay together and get better…

She added: “We don’t have small goals; we have big goals. You’ll see improvement there, I’m certain of that.”