There are stars all across women’s college basketball this season, but only one coach can claim a lineup with two of the top five players in America, at least according to The Athletic.
USC women’s basketball coach Lindsay Gottlieb heads one of the glamour teams in the sport, led by the otherworldly 6-2 sophomore wing JuJu Watkins and 6-3 graduate transfer forward Kiki Iriafen. The Trojans sit at No. 3 in both the Associated Press top 25 and coaches poll, and expectations for the program have not been this high since Cheryl Miller was anchoring back-to-back NCAA championships in 1983 and 1984. The team has a mega-showdown against No. 6 Notre Dame (NBC/Peacock, 4 p.m. ET) on Saturday.
“I don’t want our players to feel like they have the weight of the world on their shoulders,” Gottlieb says. “One thing about us that I like is we have a little swag. I see other teams really carry a weight and a burden. I don’t want that. But we’re not shying away from the expectations. We all know what’s expected of us.”
Gottlieb is an interesting person to discuss the explosion of women’s basketball interest because her program features a transcendent star in Watkins, a potential top-three pick in the 2025 WNBA Draft in Iriafen, and a glamour city to call home. I recently…
