From the moment USC’s Cinderella season ended last spring with a loss to UConn in the Elite Eight, head coach Lindsay Gottlieb has preached a consistent mantra: The bar has been raised.
And with the departure of three key Ivy League grad transfers – Kaitlyn Davis, McKenzie Forbes and Kayla Padilla aka the Nerds – Gottlieb has retooled USC’s roster with a swarm of freshmen and two big-time transfers around sophomore superstar JuJu Watkins.
Here’s a breakdown of a loaded USC 2024-25 roster (ranked No. 3 preseason) as the Trojans enter what promises to be a scintillating season with a Nov. 4 matchup against No. 20 Ole Miss on Monday in Paris.
The returners
With Caitlin Clark making waves in the WNBA, there may not be a bigger draw in collegiate women’s basketball in 2024-25 than the Watkins Show in the Big Ten.
“I think, we have a sense of what’s coming, and a little bit – no one totally knows, and that’s the fun part of it,” Gottlieb said in September. “But the last thing I worry about is her ability to handle it all.”
After a freshman year averaging 27.1 points a game, Watkins has honed her ability to get to her spot and game management in the offseason, key to her development on a program with a fresh set of faces.
Center Rayah Marshall returns, too, to lock down the middle after her second consecutive year averaging a double-double, likely to further embrace a rim-protecting and glass-cleaning role playing next to Stanford transfer Kiki Iriafen. Her backup Clarice Akunwafo is also back, a vital 6-foot-6 bench piece to USC’s NCAA Tournament run last year.
The freshmen
Gottlieb remarked in late October that this team was “younger than people think,” and she’s right: USC imports the top-ranked recruiting class in the country and a whopping seven freshmen.
The headliner of the group is Etiwanda High product Kennedy Smith, who’s quite familiar with Watkins after battling her for years at Sierra Canyon High. Smith is in line for major minutes, a versatile wing who can play on the perimeter or in the post offensively and take the challenge of guarding opposing team’s top perimeter scorers.
Keep an eye on Kayleigh Heckel, a speedy New York native with a heater from deep, and Idaho’s Avery Howell, who played as an alternate this summer on Canada’s Olympic team.
The transfers
By Gottlieb’s admission, USC only targeted two transfers in the portal. The Trojans got them both.
In comes Stanford’s Kiki Iriafen, a supremely talented power forward who put up 19.4 points and 11 rebounds a game last year and who Watkins says amazes her “every day.” In comes Oregon State’s Talia Von Oelhoffen, a veteran point guard with a life’s worth of Pac-12 battles under her belt. Both will play off Watkins – Oelhoffen as a combo guard, Iriafen as a pick-and-roll partner – in what promises to be a dynamic USC attack.
“I think, there was no one on our team that was more important in the recruitment of Kiki and Talia than JuJu,” Gottlieb said.