Fresh off a much-needed upset victory over No. 10 Iowa, USC women’s basketball entered Sunday’s game against Rutgers with as much momentum as it’s had all season — which made the first quarter all the more surprising. As the first 10 minutes came to a close, the Trojans found themselves down by 3 points to the cellar-dwelling Scarlet Knights.

Then, they remembered a crucial fact, one that has been easy to forget in a largely disappointing season: This is still the USC women’s basketball team.

Seemingly armed with a newfound confidence, the Trojans (13-9, 5-6 Big Ten) dominated the final 30 minutes, outscoring the Scarlet Knights (9-13, 1-10) 59-24 down the stretch and coming out with a 71-39 blowout win. The 32-point difference between the two squads marked USC’s largest margin of victory against a Big Ten team this season, besting a 26-point rout of Purdue (11-11, 3-8) on Jan. 18, and the Trojans’ 39 points allowed were their fewest in a conference matchup so far.

“Great weekend for us. Really excited to build from here,” Head Coach Lindsay Gottlieb said in a postgame news conference. “I thought we didn’t have our A-game offensively tonight, but we definitely had our A-game with toughness.”

Trojans rebound via rebounds

In terms of efficiency, the Trojans had one of their weakest offensive performances of the season, shooting just 36% from the field — including an 8-for-33 clip from deep — and a brutal 59% on free-throw attempts.

However, Gottlieb’s squad counteracted their shooting woes with a powerhouse performance on the glass, racking up a season-high 57 rebounds to Rutgers’ 32. Seven different Trojans recorded four or more boards, led by redshirt freshman forward Laura Williams, who set a new career-high with 11 despite playing just 15 minutes.

“We didn’t shoot it great, so there were a lot of opportunities [for rebounds], and they were in a zone, so there’s nobody really boxing you out,” Gottlieb said. “Of course, we’d love to win shooting 50-some percent and having it be really pretty and clean, but that’s not women’s basketball.”

Freshman guard Jazzy Davidson brought down nine boards of her own, just one away from her fourth double-double of the season. Despite suffering from another night of inefficiency, in which she shot 6-for-17 and missed all five of her 3-point attempts, Davidson still managed to rack up 16 points for her 19th consecutive double-digit scoring performance.

The only Trojan with more points was senior guard Kara Dunn, who finished with 18 points. Though Dunn snapped her seven-game streak of 20-point performances, she still led USC in scoring for the ninth game in a row.

Defense shuts down Scarlet Knights

Junior guard Malia Samuels made her return to the court Sunday, having missed the Iowa matchup with an undisclosed injury after starting in 17 of the Trojans’ first 20 games. Though she played just 17 minutes, her fewest in nearly two months, she still managed to contribute 7 points, four rebounds and three assists while being a major defensive presence on the court.

“I just got a text from someone with [USC] football who said, ‘If we had had Malia, we would have gone to the College Football Playoff,” Gottlieb said. “[She] gave us a huge spark.”

Samuels’ defense was representative of USC’s play as a whole, as the Trojans put on one of their best defensive showings of the season to make up for a lackluster offense. Rutgers made just 14-of-58 shots on the night — good for the second-lowest field-goal percentage allowed by USC this season — and shot an abysmal 3-of-19 from 3-point land.

While both teams struggled with turning the ball over, the Trojans did a much better job of capitalizing on the Scarlet Knights’ mistakes, scoring twice as many points off turnovers despite committing roughly the same number.

USC did so all while staying out of foul trouble, getting called for just 13 all night to Rutgers’ 22. More than half of those fouls came via sophomore forward Vivian Iwuchukwu and junior forward Gerda Raulušaityte, who committed four and three, respectively; only one other Trojan, Dunn, was called for more than one.

“We’re a better team when we don’t throw it to the other team; so is everybody,” Gottlieb said. “We just have to continue to value the ball [and] be sharp.”

After tumbling down the projected NCAA Tournament field throughout the season, USC finally gave itself some breathing room after Thursday’s win over Iowa, settling in at a No. 9 seed, according to predictions from ESPN’s Charlie Creme. 

However, the Trojans are still far from guaranteed to hear their names called come Selection Sunday; there’s plenty of work to do as they face down their final seven games of the regular season. Major tests await in No. 9 Ohio State (20-3, 9-2) and No. 2 UCLA (21-1, 11-0), either of whom could give USC a big enough win to lock down a postseason bid — assuming the Trojans take care of business elsewhere.

Before facing either of those teams, though, USC will head out for its penultimate road trip of the season. The Trojans are set to face Northwestern (8-14, 2-9) on Thursday at 6 p.m. before an early-morning battle with Illinois (16-6, 6-5) on Sunday at 10 a.m.