For a few minutes after their home opener tipped Friday night, No. 21 USC didn’t look like the team that had toppled No. 7 Ohio State in their first game of the season four days earlier.
They missed shot after shot, and committed two turnovers, while FGCU ran out to a 9-0 lead. Finally at the 5:25 mark, Trojan coach Lindsay Gottlieb called a timeout. She had waited, to see how her team would handle the pressure. But once they were standing before her, the message was simple.
“We just said ‘Hey, we’ve got to pick it up here.’ We’ve got to communicate, and (practice) the principles that we’ve worked on,” Gottlieb said. “You know what the pace is, and how urgent every possession is. And I thought they established themselves after that.”
USC came out of the timeout and ran up 8 unanswered points, after forward Rayah Marshall broke the seal off of the basket with a layup. Three of the other starters got involved, and put the hosts up 14-11 at the end of the period.
Using stingy defense, the Trojans limited the Eagles to 8 points in the next quarter, en route to a 33-19 advantage at the break. Marshall and freshman sensation JuJu Watkins, who each finished with 18 points, scored 7…
