LOS ANGELES — In the blink of an eye, and the buckle of a knee, the cheers that had filled the Galen Center on Monday night went silent.
Concern fell over the arena, because USC star point guard JuJu Watkins had just gone down in a heap, audibly wailing as she grabbed her right knee during the first quarter of the Trojans’ NCAA Tournament second-round game against Mississippi State.
While on a fast-break, Watkins had tried to deke a pair of Bulldog defenders by quickly changing pace for her patented Euro-step, but when she planted her right leg to make the move, it gave out.
As the video board showed the replay of what later was announced as a season-ending injury, that silence yielded to boos. The jeering, seemingly, came without a clear direction. It could have been at Mississippi State’s Chandler Prater, who had fouled Watkins, or at the angst of the situation.
But, among those boos, one fan took a positive turn, bellowing, “let’s show them how deep this roster is!”
Indeed, the USC women’s basketball team fulfilled the request. With Watkins out after her fall at the 4:43 mark of the first quarter, the top-seeded Trojans (30-3) rallied together, playing an unselfish brand of basketball, with an offense that ran through senior Kiki Iriafen to dominate the Bulldogs, 96-59, and advance to the Sweet 16 in Spokane, Washington, where they will face Kansas State on Saturday.
Iriafen scored a season-high 36 points, shooting 16 for 22 from the field, while grabbing nine rebounds. Avery Howell added 18 points and was 4 for 9 from 3-point range, while Kayleigh Heckel filled the ball-handling role left by Watkins, dishing six assists and scoring 13 points.
The Trojans, who held Mississippi State (22-12) scoreless for its first eight possessions before Watkins went down, limited the Bulldogs to 20-of-64 shooting for the night, and forced 20 turnovers.
And, their fans let the Bulldogs have it, booing them every time they touched the ball after Watkins’ injury.
“You cannot tell me that the energy of that crowd and how, sort of, angry they were with the other team, and how much fire they showed for our team is so much about what JuJu has given to this arena, to this program, to the city,” USC head coach Lindsay Gottlieb said after the game. “You don’t get to go into the coaching manual script, and go by everything the way it’s supposed to happen.”
Pulsed by adrenaline, Gottlieb decided to gather her team as the officials reviewed the foul on Watkins. She looked each and everyone of them in the eye and said:
“We can do this, you know, we’ve got this. We need everybody.”
And her players responded.
“At the end of the day, we have to win the game,” Iriafen said. “Respectfully, nobody cares, on Mississippi State, that we lost (Watkins). So we just really rallied.”
The crowd chanted as if someone had stolen their queen, their roars galvanizing the Trojans to play in her honor, with the same passion she’s given to this city.
Kennedy Smith clapped the floor on defense and got under the Bulldogs’ ball-handlers skin. Rayah Marshall stared down opponents after each of her four blocked shots. The bench rose their left hand in the air to copy Iriafen whenever she finished a left-handed layup.
And when Marshall banked in a 3-pointer to beat the halftime buzzer, the whole squad swarmed her at midcourt. Iriafen bumped her chest, Howell enveloped her in an embrace, and Aaliyah Gayles wagged her tongue before dapping Marshall up.
“All of those shots, all of those buzzer-beaters, all of those and-ones, those are energy plays for us,” Howell said. “The bench is hype, the coaching staff’s hype, the atmosphere the entire gym – I think that it’s a huge momentum swing for us.”
In fact, the Trojans made buzzer-beating shots in the first, second and third quarters.
They played at their constant break-neck pace, they full-court pressed the Bulldogs into oblivion. They smiled, they laughed, and they talked a lot of trash.
“We weren’t extra,” Gottlieb said. “We were just us.”
Their gleeful, exuberant selves.
At the same time, that joy for USC’s clicking-on-all-cylinders dominance came with a grain of salt as Watkins’ injury remained in the back of minds – and the front of hearts – throughout Monday’s game. But her teammates did their best to create a different headline.
The Big Ten Player of the Year’s absence gave way for Iriafen to be the offensive hub.
She scored on consecutive possessions in the first half, setting up on the left elbow and driving to the basket, then countering with a mid-range jump shot after the Bulldogs took the drive away.
In the second half, she ran pick-and-rolls with Smith and Heckel, the USC bench making goggle signs over their eyes as the guards found her for finger-roll finishes. Iriafen knocked down another mid-range jumper, bobbing her head to mimic the ball bouncing off the rim and in.
“Obviously, Kiki, I think, is one of the best players in the country,” Mississippi State head coach Sam Purcell said. “We threw the whole kitchen sink, and the house. But she was just electric. And that’s what great players do. They make plays and they carry a swagger.”
By the third quarter, “Ki-Ki” chants echoed throughout the arena and the Galen Center Em-C, D.J. Mal-ski, started playing the chorus of Drake’s “In My Feelings” which goes: “Kiki, do you love me?”
Iriafen played as if she felt that way about basketball.
Her offense, USC’s defense, the Trojans’ collective enthusiasm, changed the tone of the arena on a night when emotions yo-yo’d on a string.
Instead of wallowing in the unknown of Watkins’ status, the Trojans stuck together and showed their depth, which will be crucial moving forward as they push for a National Championship without their star.
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