Women of Troy split roadtrip games
The USC women’s basketball team traveled up to Northern California, hoping to continue a modest two-game winning streak after a pair of home wins last weekend against Colorado and Utah. The winning streak didn’t last long, as the Women of Troy suffered a 79-60 defeat at the hands of No. 19 Stanford in Palo Alto, but bounced back to upset California 65-54 in Berkeley.
Senior forward Alexyz Vaioletama led the Women of Troy (14-11, 6-8 Pac-12) with a combined 31 points over the weekend, along with 12 rebounds. Senior forward Kaneisha Horn added 27 points and a team-leading 18 rebounds.
Vaioletama led the Women of Troy with 14 points against the Cardinal, along with five rebounds. Sophomore guard Courtney Jaco scored 11 points, while Horn and junior guard Brianna Barrett added 10 points each. Horn grabbed 11 rebounds for her second double-double of the season, while Barrett added four assists and four rebounds.
Lili Thompson led Stanford (19-7, 11-3 Pac-12) with 14 points and four assists. Amber Orrange and Briana Roberson added 13 points each, while Bonnie Samuelson finished with 12 points and six rebounds.
The game started out with promise, as the two teams alternated leads throughout the first few minutes of the game. USC led 16-14 after a layup by Vaioletama with 13:18 left in the half. However, a 15-4 run by the Cardinal gave them the lead for good, and they’d continue to build their advantage en route to a 38-27 halftime lead.
The Women of Troy wouldn’t give up, however, and started the second half with a 10-4 run to cut Stanford’s lead to 5. That’s as close as USC would get, as Stanford would keep building its lead, ending USC’s two-game winning streak, as well as the Cardinal’s two-game losing streak.
“Our game plan was to come out with a lot of intensity and just push in transition,” Horn said. “When we were doing that, we were playing great basketball. I think we got away from that, and after we stopped protecting, it went downhill from there.”
Stanford shot 55 percent from the field, compared to 38 percent for USC. The Women of Troy did win the rebounding battle again, grabbing 38 boards to Stanford’s 34.
“We started off really strong,” head coach Cynthia Cooper-Dyke said. “I just don’t think we maintained that level of intensity, and when you’re playing against a team like Stanford, you cannot have a letdown defensively.”
USC would have to bounce back quickly, as it only had a day to prepare for a California team that was riding an eight-game winning streak after a 70-64 win over UCLA. They did just that, riding a strong second half. Vaioletama and Horn each finished with 17 points and seven rebounds against the Golden Bears. Sophomore guard Alexis Lloyd added 14 points off the bench.
Reshanda Grey, Cal’s leading scorer with 18.1 points per game, led the Golden Bears (19-6, 11-3 Pac-12) with 32 points and 10 rebounds, but was unable to overcome a lack of offensive production from the rest of the squad. Grey was the only double-digit scorer on her team, and Cal got no points off its bench, compared to USC’s 16.
The first half was a promising sign for the Women of Troy, who kept it close throughout, even holding a 20-19 lead with 6:30 remaining. The Golden Bears would get hot down the stretch, entering the locker room with a 34-25 lead, with things looking like deja vu for USC.
USC wasn’t about to let history repeat itself in Berkeley. After a layup by Grey gave the Bears a 39-27 lead, Vaioletama and Horn scored 11 unanswered for USC to put them back in the game. After a back-and-forth stretch, USC took a 49-48 lead with 8:17 remaining on a layup by Jaco, and held California at bay for a big road win
“We’ve been waiting for Kaneisha to really showcase her complete game all year long, and I thought she did that tonight with her mid-range game,” Cooper-Dyke said. “She really knocked down some jumpers, and her ability to take it to the basket off the bounce. She utilized both of those [Sunday] to really keep the Cal defenders off-balance. When they played her outside shot, she went around them. When they played her penetration, she knocked down the outside shot. She did some good things, and kept us in the game when we were struggling scoring, and then helped seal the deal in the second half.”
Both teams grabbed 34 rebounds, while USC shot 43 percent to Cal’s 40. USC had big advantages from behind the arc and in the turnover battle, shooting 30 percent from downtown to Cal’s 9, while committing 15 turnovers to Cal’s 20.
“This is honestly just the beginning,” Lloyd said. “We have to take every game one step at a time. We can’t rush things, we can’t determine that we’re always going to win game after game. We just have to take one game at a time and practice on executing and playing 100 percent every time we step on the court.”
USC will play its final two home games next weekend, taking on Arizona (9-16, 2-12 Pac-12) on Friday, Feb. 20 at 7 p.m. and No. 12 Arizona State (22-4, 11-3 Pac-12) on Sunday, Feb. 22 at 3 p.m. The Trojans will conclude the regular season with road games against Washington (19-7, 8-6 Pac-12) on Thursday, Feb. 26 at 6 p.m. and Washington State (14-11, 5-9 Pac-12) on Saturday, Feb. 28 at 3 p.m. The final three games will be available on the Pac-12 Network.