The USC women’s basketball team held the UNC Greensboro Spartans 71-25. The Women of Troy held the Spartans to 13 percent in shooting from the field.
The victory snapped a 14-game winning streak for the Spartans.
Sophomore guard JuJu Watkins led USC with 22 points; grad student forward Kiki Iriafen made 13 rebounds along with 13 points.
Spartans freshman guard Nya Smith led with seven points and three Spartans players made seven rebounds each.
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USC senior center Rayah Marshall led the defensive effort with seven blocks. USC made 17 steals and 10 blocks in the contest. Grad student Kiki Iriafen noted how Marshall is an “unsung hero.”
“She really is the anchor to our team. There’s no us without [Marshall],” Iriafen said. “She’s just so vocal. Even when she’s not on the court, we can always hear her. She’s always positive. So she’s always impacting the game whether she’s on the floor or not.”
The Women of Troy jumped to an 8-0 lead in the early minutes. USC made four blocks and eight rebounds by the first quarter, holding Greensboro to eight points.
“Our defense is something that we really take pride in,” USC sophomore guard JuJu Watkins said. “I think because we couldn’t really get it going on our offense, we relied on our defensive ability.”
In turn, the Spartans held the Women of Troy to shooting at 35.7 from the field and 25 percent from deep. Watkins led with 11 points. UNC Greensboro has the best defensive efficiency in the nation.
“We had a goal going into halftime to not let them score half their average, which we did do that,” senior guard Jayde Gamble said. “Of course, we wanted to make some more buckets, but we did achieve our goal defensively.”
By the half, Marshall had four blocks. That aided in the Women of Troy holding the Spartans to three points in the second quarter.
“I think the biggest thing for us was us being able to fix ourselves. I think we were kind of beating ourselves in the first half on offense,” USC freshman guard Kayleigh Heckel. “I think we had to regroup at halftime, and when we did that, we got into our flow.”
The Women of Troy made 40 points in the paint and 32 points from turnovers. All but two USC players scored in the matchup.
UNC Greensboro punched their ticket to the Big Dance after winning the SoCon Tournament Championship. The Spartans have not made an appearance in the Division I NCAA Tournament since 1998.
“We’re united in the locker room. We don’t let things separate us,” said UNC Greensboro head coach Trina Patterson. “we operate in humility so that we can pour into our players and they can learn and get better. As you’ve seen, the defense gets better throughout the year.”
USC will battle Mississippi State on March 24 at 7:00P.M.
