It was a classic battle of David versus Goliath Tuesday night at Galen Center. But in this rendition of the fable, No. 6 USC women’s basketball thrashed Cal Poly by a score of 85-44 in a convincing wire-to-wire victory.

The Trojans (6-0) were the bigger team in every sense of the word — record, national prominence and stature. Only one USC starter was below six feet tall, while the Mustangs (2-5)  had just one player standing taller than 5-foot-10 in their starting lineup. 

Daily headlines, sent straight to your inbox.

Subscribe to our newsletter to keep up with the latest at and around USC.

“We just want to be disruptive,” said Head Coach Lindsay Gottlieb in a postgame press conference. “Our height, our size allows us to be disruptive … we’re still learning each other, but the more that we can do to be disruptive gets us some easy looks in transition.”

Freshman guard JuJu Watkins exemplified that stark height difference with just under three minutes gone in the second period. Watkins put the pressure on Cal Poly 5-foot-3 junior guard Annika Shah, bullied the ball away from her and finished on the other end of the court as if Shah wasn’t even there.

Watkins continued her stellar freshman campaign, putting up 30 points, four rebounds and four assists while going 10-for-19 from the field. It was Watkins’ fourth 30-point game in her sixth career game — already the most by a freshman in program history.

Watkins has shown out so far this season and has proved to everyone exactly why she was the No. 1 recruit coming out of high school.

“[I put in] hard work in the gym this past summer and I had to make a lot of adjustments approaching the season,” Watkins said. “I still am adjusting, but it’s a testament to how hard my teammates pushed me, how our coaches pushed me, and the product is this.”

The Mustangs attempted to compensate for their height by coming out in a zone defense look to start the game. USC wasn’t fazed and jumped to a 23-10 first quarter lead while shooting five of nine from 3-point range.

It seemed to be all smooth sailing in the second half before a scary moment happened in the third quarter for the Trojans. Watkins hit heads with a Mustang defender while going for a loose ball and sustained a bloody nose. She was shaken up and was ushered to the locker room.

USC was scoreless for almost four and a half minutes with Watkins off the court. She returned to the court with just over 30 seconds left in the third quarter, and USC closed the quarter on a 7-0 run — capped by a buzzer-beating three by graduate forward McKenzie Forbes.

Forbes helped pace the rest of the scoring effort, logging 14 points and four assists to go along with four threes made — her most so far this season. Forbes, in her fourth season after transferring from Harvard in the offseason, scored her 1,000 career point in the third quarter. 

It’s been a long journey for Forbes, who suited up for her first college game in 2018 with the UC Berkeley  Golden Bears. Her head coach at the time? Gottlieb.

“It means a lot, it kind of makes you reflect back on your college career,” Forbes said. “[Gottlieb] witnessed my first basket, and here we are five years later. It means a lot to me, not just to accomplish that, but to do it with her at this school and with the teammates that I have.”

USC’s lead ballooned to 41 points at its peak, dominating Cal Poly in nearly every major statistical category. The Trojans took advantage of their length to get into Mustang passing lanes. They forced 25 turnovers and scored 31 points off of the takeaways.

With the lead as large as it was, the Trojans could empty their bench and give seldom-used players a few minutes. Even with the bench unit in, USC continued to extend its lead. Part of that bench unit was senior guard Kayla Williams, who logged her first minutes of the season after starting all 31 games a season ago.

“She has really good feet; she really can slide and move and be very disruptive,” Gottlieb said. “She came in and changed the tempo, and I thought she made some really good decisions on the offensive end.”

Redshirt freshman guard Aaliyah Gayles — who over a year and a half ago got shot 18 times — scored her first career points with a 3-pointer. It was meant with an uproar from USC’s bench with cheers all around for Gyales. 

The Trojans logged 25 bench points all together. Despite the lack of minutes, they look to be a strong unit for the rest of the season and are all buying into Gottlieb’s system.

“What’s really good about our team is that I don’t think people really care so much about anything other than winning,” Gottlieb said. “We know that our depth is going to be critical … that allows us to play a different way, allows us to wrestle people, but allows us to keep coming at opponents in a way that we want to.”

After starting 6-0 for the second straight season, The Trojans will partake in their second game of their current four-game homestand when they take on the University of San Diego on Sunday at 3 p.m.