One scary fact about USC women’s basketball on January 13

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JuJu David Butler II-Imagn Images

It is the morning of Monday, January 13, 2025. USC women’s basketball is 16-1 overall this season. Its only loss came on a day when one of its best players, Kennedy Smith, was injured and unavailable to play. That was against Notre Dame — a top-10 team — on November 23. USC is 6-0 in the Big Ten Conference, right there with 5-0 UCLA and 5-0 Ohio State in a battle for a conference championship. USC beat 5-1 Maryland on the road. UCLA and OSU have not played Maryland yet. USC has a road win at UConn and looks like a No. 1 seed.

Sounds pretty good, right? One might easily think USC is playing its absolute best basketball, and that it can’t get much better than this. “Just keep doing the same thing” is a reasonable line of analysis with this team. It’s not as though this season is going poorly. It’s not. It has been a really good season to this point.

However, we are not seeing — and have not generally seen — the very best from USC women’s basketball. We have seen really good basketball, but not great basketball. That sounds like nitpicking, and we get it. If Lindsay Gottlieb thinks that statement is too harsh, we understand why.

However, Gottlieb and JuJu Watkins and everyone else associated with this program can acknowledge one reason why this team hasn’t hit its ceiling. It’s not controversial to bring up this point because no one can dispute it: USC is not a good 3-point-shooting team. That’s a fact, Jack.

On January 13, the 2025 Trojans are a 31.9-percent shooting team from 3-point range. JuJu Watkins hits 35.3 percent of her triples, which is not terrible but not amazing. Kayleigh Heckel hits 37 percent of 3-pointers, but she has taken just 27 attempts in 17 games, which is under two attempts per game.

Sunday against Penn State, USC was 6 of 25 from 3-point range. USC scored 95, but just imagine how much the Trojans would have scored if they hit threes.

In 17 games this season, USC has made 115 3-pointers. That’s an average of close to…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/one-scary-fact-usc-womens-163118569.html

Author : Trojans Wire

Publish date : 2025-01-13 16:31:00

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