Los Angeles, CA- Women of Troy were without their starting center and still able to out rebound despite a tough shooting night from their leading scorer to beat Minnesota, 82-69 at the Galen Center for their 8th straight home game win.
KiKi Iriafen appeared ready from the tunnel to pick up any slack for her missing Senior frontcourt teammate, Rayah Marshall, with almost recording double-digit rebounds by halftime. Adding back-to-back three-pointers to top off an 18-3 run before Minnesota forced a couple of turnovers to respond with their short run of 8 straight points at the end of the first quarter.

Inserting Clarice Akunwafo to matchup against Minnesota Golden Gophers’ Sophie Hart turned out to be a great call by coach Lindsay Gottlieb rather than going with a smaller lineup as Hart proved to be a tall task all game.
“We didn’t know Rayah wasn’t going to play until this morning so I thought other people stepped up, finding different ways to win” Coach Gottlieb said while grappling about her team’s first half effort.”At the same time I think our standards are really high and we could have been cleaner defensively and offensively.”
Coach Gottlieb praised her freshmen for seizing their opportunity to play more minutes, particularly Kennedy Smith and Avery Powell, whose combined effort on both ends of the court helped their team to never allow Minnesota to take a lead as they trailed the entire game.
More team positivity displayed, when JuJu Watkins, got it going from the field, opening the second half with her only triple of the game. After going 0-10 in the first half, Watkins determined to fight perhaps road fatigue on a night when another opponent’s team defense seemed to concentrate solely on her to find a way to score and continue her streak of double digit scoring now in all 20 games.
“I thought her [JuJu] teammates really lifted her up, and the fact people are going to continue to give us open threes when she’s crowded and stuff, and we continue to knock them down as this is the second game I believe in a row we’ve made 11 threes, Gottlieb explained. “She is a very mentally tough human being and basketball player, who finds a way to figure it out.”

USC owned the third quarter just about putting the game away once freshman Avery Howell hit back to back threes for her third of the game to extend USC’s lead to 17. Howell was the third player to finish in double-digits for USC while Talia Von Oelhoffen started the game with scoring 8 points in the first half before finding herself limited due to foul trouble.
“We had a week off but I honestly like working as a team to get better and what we need to do to grow, taking one day at a time, is most important,” Howell said.
Golden Gophers Hart’s solid post play resulted in 18 points, while Amaya Battle and Mallory Heyer contributed 14 and 17, respectively, to score in double-figures, pushing USC to play their starters almost the entire game. Iriafen, Smith and Watkins scored up into the final seconds of the game, to hold on to a double-digit scoring margin, continuing a 15 game winning streak, 9th Big 10 conference win.

KiKi Iraifen led all scorers with 23 points and 11 rebounds, her seventh double-double, on an efficient shooting night, hitting 9-11, including 2 for 2 from beyond the arc, with 3-4 free throws. This is the second time that Iriafen and Watkins have recorded double-doubles in the same game. Watkins has made one 3-pointer and one block in the last ten games.
USC will hit the road for a pair of Big 10 conference games, first being against Iowa on Sunday, Feb. 2nd, which Iowa plans to retire their former player and current WNBA Fever player Caitlin Clark’s jersey. Next stop, Women of Troy will travel to Wisconsin to face the Badgers on Feb. 5.