Lindsay Gottlieb and USC women’s basketball laying the foundation for a rebuild

No extra ready in crowded airport terminals for Desiree Caldwell this 12 months. USC’s senior level guard, after three seasons of economic flights that crisscrossed the Pac-12, acquired a style of the excessive life because the Trojans flew on chartered flights for every convention sport. Caldwell steered the Trojans by means of a training change and celebrated by bypassing safety strains. She didn’t should empty her water bottles or dig her laptop computer out of her bag. She smiled for photographs as she walked up the ramp into the personal planes.

The identical perk that has been a sticking level within the WNBA for years was customary follow at USC, the place the athletic division made a transparent assertion to spend money on its girls’s basketball program below first-year coach Lindsay Gottlieb.

However even with personal planes and a retooled assist employees, the Trojans didn’t absolutely take flight in Gottlieb’s first season.

USC (12-16) missed the NCAA match for the eighth consecutive season. The Trojans knocked off then-No. 4 Arizona in January for his or her first top-five win since 2014, however they completed tenth within the Pac-12, shedding within the first spherical of the convention match to UCLA.

“This league is actually onerous, however I believe we laid the inspiration a little bit little bit of what it takes to [win consistently],” Gottlieb mentioned.”We set that bar. Now now we have to satisfy that bar and exceed that bar constantly.”

Gottlieb inherited a program that had not been ranked within the prime half of the Pac-12 in scoring protection since 2018. The Trojans, who went 11-12 earlier than Mark Trakh retired after the 2020-21 season, had the convention’s worst rebounding margin final season at minus-8.6. It ranked 318th out of 336 Division I groups.

Addressing protection and rebounding have been on the prime of Gottlieb’s priorities this season. The Trojans improved solely marginally on protection, permitting 64.7 factors per sport in comparison with final season’s 68.9-point common, however grabbed 1.5 extra rebounds per sport than their opponents, leaping to 131st in Division I.

Rayah Marshall was on the forefront of the development with a team-high 7.7 rebounds per sport. The 6-foot-4 McDonald’s All-American was named to the Pac-12’s all-freshman staff after averaging 11.2 factors, ending the season with 11 consecutive double-digit scoring nights and notching double-doubles in 4 of her final 5 video games.

“Lots of occasions you see freshmen hit a wall and really decline on the finish of the 12 months,” Gottlieb mentioned. “She went the opposite manner. She’s extraordinarily coachable, extraordinarily affected person, very prepared to be taught, she’s bodily gifted.”

Marshall caught to her USC dedication after the teaching change. Recruiting has began slowly below Gottlieb, who accepted the job in Could 2021, a comparatively late start thinking about recruiting cycles. The Trojans haven’t any introduced signees for the 2022 class however maintain an oral dedication from five-star level guard Aaliyah Gayles.

Gayles, a 5-foot-9 level guard from Las Vegas, was named a McDonald’s All-American in January and is the No. 8 prospect in her class, based on ESPN. She will be able to make an instantaneous affect for the Trojans, who should exchange Caldwell, their three-time captain.

Caldwell’s affect went properly past her minimal stat line of three.5 factors and three.3 assists in 29.1 minutes a sport. Gottlieb mentioned the Trojans will miss the toughness and perspective of their seniors, which included graduate transfers Jordan Sanders and Tera Reed. Caldwell hopes these traits will set the usual for future success below Gottlieb.

“I can’t wait to see what’s subsequent for her,” Caldwell mentioned, “and the way she additional simply modifications this program and really restores it to what it’s meant to be.”

USC coach Lindsay Gottlieb talks to her staff throughout a timeout in opposition to Hawaii on Nov. 11.

(Kyusung Gong / Related Press)

A return to prominence was why athletic director Mike Bohn focused Gottlieb in his teaching search. The previous California girls’s coach who led the Golden Bears to the Last 4 in 2014 was the primary NCAA girls’s basketball coach to be employed by an NBA staff. She was in her second season with the Cleveland Cavaliers when she noticed that Trakh had retired. When college statements are sometimes mad libs of recycled firm strains and forgettable phrase salad, there was one line in USC’s announcement that caught with Gottlieb.

This system that was infamous for its restricted funding round girls’s basketball lately was now, based on Bohn’s assertion “dedicated to offering the mandatory sources to revive the illustrious custom of excellence of the Girls of Troy.”

The promise wasn’t simply an empty information launch.

Together with chartered flights on all Pac-12 journeys, Gottlieb secured particular gear shipments for her staff, which obtained customized Nike sneakers in January. She hopes so as to add program-specific positions for digital and social media and overhaul the energy and conditioning employees. With the rising significance of psychological well being in athletics, Gottlieb desires to advocate for the staff’s sports activities psychologist to journey with them to normalize looking for out psychological well being sources the identical manner gamers go to athletic trainers, therapeutic massage therapists or tutorial advisors.

When she arrived in Could, Gottlieb didn’t notice the extent of what she wanted to revive this system to prominence, however every suggestion was well-received by the administration.

“I really feel as these conversations occur as readily with me as they occur with Lincoln Riley,” Gottlieb mentioned. “And that’s a extremely particular place to be.”

USC is now ready for a return on its investments within the type of wins.

A seventh NCAA girls’s choice present will cross with out USC’s title coming throughout the display screen. The college hasn’t had its males’s and girls’s applications play within the NCAA match in the identical 12 months since 1997. Talking on the cellphone from Las Vegas in the course of the Pac-12 males’s match that featured the NCAA tournament-bound USC males’s staff, Bohn dreamed of ending that streak with Gottlieb on the helm.

“I do know that Lindsay and her staff and her employees need to be a part of us in that journey,” Bohn mentioned. “Our report didn’t replicate the progress that we made, however boy you may see it in sure video games and sure occasions, the brilliance of her capability to handle a sport.”