For the second time this season, the USC women's basketball team was under the sport's biggest spotlight Saturday night in a clash of top national contenders.
The first such opportunity for the Trojans didn't turn out so well with a 74-61 home loss to then-No. 6 Notre Dame last month. That remains the team's only blemish, though, and this time they delivered a momentous win to that impressive resume.
No. 7-ranked USC closed out a 72-70 win over No. 4 UConn in Hartford, Connecticut, behind 25 points, 6 rebounds, 5 assists and 3 blocks from star JuJu Watkins and a double-double from Kiki Iriafen, who finished with 16 points, 11 rebounds and 6 assists.
"This is a really significant win and it's a really significant win because of the stature of UConn's program and what Geno Auriemma has done for our sport," USC coach Lindsay Gottlieb said. "I told them in there, for me, for my entire high school and on, this is what basketball excellence was. This is what we saw and it's challenged all of us to want to be better and to find players who want to be better and want to be elite. ...
"I'm just really proud of our team -- I can't say it in enough ways. When we lost to Notre Dame, it would have been really easy to blame people, to fracture apart, to listen to outside stuff, and I said, 'Hey, as long as we stick together this can make us better,' and it has. It has in every way."
This is USC's first-ever win over UConn and a reversal of outcome from the last meeting, when the Huskies ended the Trojans' season in the Elite Eight last year (80-73).
"It feels great to get the W always. I think it hit a little different knowing the history of last year and how they sent us home," Watkins said. "So it was just great to see everybody that came out -- I don't think I've ever played in front of so many people."
USC (11-1) led by as many as 18 points early in the second half Saturday, only to see the Huskies (10-2) battled back and take a 1-point lead on a layup by Sarah Strong with 4:34 remaining, but the Trojans played with poise late in front of a crowd of 15,684 at XL Center.
Watkins immediately hit a tough jumper, drew a foul and hit the free throw to put USC back up 67-65.
The teams traded a series of empty possessions before UConn star Paige Bueckers hit a layup with 2:24 remaining to tie the score again.
After misses on both ends, Rayah Marshall scored in the paint for USC with 1:24 left, on an assist from Watkins, to put the Trojans up once more.
Watkins later went 1 of 2 from the foul line to make it a 70-67 lead, and Strong quickly answered with a layup to make it 70-69 with 27 seconds left. Two more Watkins free throws made it 72-69 with 19 seconds left, and Strong was sent to the line for three shots with 5 seconds left.
She made just 1 of the 3, but Bueckers grabbed the rebound and Strong teed up a final 3-point attempt that missed to end it.
"The team stuck together today. We punched first, we made a lot of shots and when it got hard down the stretch we held together and no one got off the treadmill, which is something we talked about together. So really proud of the big win," Gottlieb said.
Said Iriafen: "We knew how it felt to be in such a big game and for it to not go our way, so I think with that we didn't want the same thing to happen today. ... Even when things got hard, I didn't make shots, we had turnovers, we were like, 'Just one stop, one stop.' I think that's the biggest improvement we've made from the [Notre Dame] game is just coming together when things get hard and understanding that we practice every day, we've done the work, we can trust that work. And I think there's just like a chip on our shoulder -- losing to UConn in the Elite Eight last year, we didn't want that to happen again."
Bueckers and Strong led UConn with 22 points each while Strong added 13 boards.
Watkins and Iriafen have scored in double-figures every game this season for USC. Marshall added 6 points and 9 rebounds and Kennedy Smith chipped in 9 points on a career-high 3 3-pointers.
