With 11 points, 11 rebounds and nine assists, No. 2 Oregon women basketball’s junior Sabrina Ionescu needed just one assist for her 17th career and seventh season triple-double.
With just a couple of seconds left in the third quarter, she found freshman Taylor Chavez on the perimeter of the 3-point line to end the quarter with an NCAA single-season record-breaking triple-double.
Coming off two-straight upset losses, the Ducks (25-3, 14-2) returned in typical Oregon fashion: with a Ionescu triple-double and a shooting-the-lights out third quarter where the Ducks went 77.8 percent from beyond the arc. Redshirt sophomore Erin Boley led the Ducks with a season and game-high 32 points. Ionescu finished with 13 points, 12 rebounds and 13 assists as the Ducks beat USC 96-78.
Junior Ruthy Hebard returned after missing Friday’s UCLA game and part of Monday’s Civil War game due to a right-knee injury. She scored 13 points, grabbed eight rebounds and brought familiar stability.
“It just felt normal,” Ionescu said. “It just felt like another game for us. We weren’t missing anything; I mean, Ruthy came out and had a monster game inside.”
Hebard did not start, but instead, senior Oti Gildon, who joined the starting line Friday in Hebard’s place, started in her last regular-season home game at Oregon.
Gildon and fellow-senior Maite Cazorla are the most winningest Ducks in program history, earned a combined 15 points, nine from Cazorla and six from Gildon.
“I think Oti and Maite have meant everything to this program. They took a chance on us when we didn’t really have anything to sell them other than the vision,” head coach Kelly Graves said.
Behind a slow start, Oregon trailed much of the first quarter, and even with a late-quarter 11-4 run, the Ducks finished down two, as USC outpaced Oregon 27-25. 
The Ducks shutout USC for the first half of the second quarter, opening on a 9-0 run to grab back the lead and put seven points between them and the Trojans. Oregon allowed just nine Trojans points in the quarter, as USC shot 23 percent, 20 from the 3-point line.
At half, redshirt sophomore Erin Boley led the Ducks with ten points, while Hebard followed with nine in just nine minutes on the court.
Oregon opened the half with another early run, this time 10-0, to extend its four-point lead to 14. The Trojans fought back on a 9-2 run to get back within seven, but the effort wasn’t enough. Behind Ionescu’s triple-double and Boley’s 13 points, the Ducks finished the quarter up 18 at 53-68, their biggest lead margin.
“I think [Ionescu’s] tried to put a lot on her shoulders,” Graves said. “I think she played a lot more free tonight and was able to go out and do a little bit of everything.”
The Trojans earned as many baskets as the Ducks in the fourth quarter, but finished the game down 18 points.
Oregon is on the road this week to play the Arizona schools in its last regular-season games before heading to Las Vegas for the Pac-12 Tournament March 7-10.
Follow Sierra Webster on Twitter @WebsterSierraE.