Five different players scored in double figures for the USC Trojans as they picked up their ninth conference win of the season last night at McArthur Court.
Three of the five starters — Christina Marinacci, Briana Gilbreath, and Ashley Corral — scored at least 13 points, while Hailey Dunham and Jacki Gemelos came off the bench to account for the other two double-digit performances.
“It’s a hard game to capsulate,” first-year head coach Paul Westhead said of the Ducks’ 87-84 loss. “We played well enough in some ways to win, and yet we didn’t get it.”
Though the Ducks shot 31-of-63 (49.2 percent) from the floor, Oregon was outrebounded and committed more turnovers than assists, dropping them to 16-11 overall and 7-8 in Pacific-10 Conference play.
USC’s Corral, a sophomore guard from Vancouver, Wash., paced the Trojans with a game-high 23 points to go along with her 12 assists and five rebounds during her game-high 38 minutes of action. Entering the game as the seventh-ranked scored in the Pac-10 at 15.1 points per outing, Corral made a living from beyond the three-point line, connecting on five of her 13 attempts.
“It was kind of a back-and-forth battle,” Oregon’s Taylor Lilley said after yet another tough loss for the Ducks.
Lilley hit 4-of-8 from deep on the night, pacing Oregon with 22 points.
A series of turnovers and missed opportunities forced Oregon to foul late in the game, putting Corral on the line five times in the final 15 seconds of regulation. She sank 4-of-5 during that stretch, but did the majority of her damage from the perimeter.
“I think they did a good job of just being aggressive on us,” Lilley continued. “They were passing the ball, ya know, really pushing forward and we had to be more aggressive in our traps. A couple times we were, but not enough.”
As a team, the Trojans, who entered the game ranked second only to Oregon in the Pac-10 three-point field goal percentage, connected on 9-of-22 shots (40.9 percent) from deep. The three-point shooting helped keep up with the fast pace of the Oregon game, USC head coach Michael Cooper said after the game.
“(Westhead) truly goes by the first team to 100 wins,” Cooper said. “And there’s nothing wrong with that; he’s been very successful.”
USC’s other sophomore sensation, Gilbreath, scored 15 of her 20 points in the first half on 6-of-7 shooting, and also chipped in four rebounds, two assists and two steals.
The game ultimately came down to making free throws, which the Trojans had no trouble with in the second half, where they connected on 11-of-14 from the charity stripe.
Oregon had a handful of chances to tie the game or take the lead down the stretch, but nothing ever accumulated for Westhead’s squad.
“We’re a full-court defensive team, so we have the capacity to get a five-second count or a turnover,” Westhead said. “We didn’t get that; therefore we had to foul.”
The win split the season series for USC after being defeated by Oregon in Los Angeles on Jan. 30, and the squad will still look to make a run at the postseason with only three games remaining on the conference schedule. After facing UCLA on Saturday, the Ducks will travel to the Washington schools next week.
NOTES:
Prior to tip-off, former Oregon star Shaquala Williams was honored as the Ducks honorary captain. Williams was one of only two Duck players to receive the Pac-10 Player of the Year Award, taking home the honor during her sophomore campaign in 2000. The two-time Associated Press All-American averaged 17.7 points and 4.3 assists during that year, leading Oregon to its second-straight Pac-10 championship.
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