This article explores the dynamic relationship between USC women's basketball star JuJu Watkins and head coach Lindsay Gottlieb, highlighting their shared vision of success and commitment to teamwork. It examines how Gottlieb's coaching style, influenced by her NBA experience, fosters a pro-style offense that allows players like Watkins to shine while emphasizing collective achievement over individual accolades.
USC guard JuJu Watkins, right, holds a ball to commemorate scoring 1,000 career points as she stands with head coach Lindsay Gottlieb prior to a game against Michigan earlier this season at the Galen Center. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill), 2 miles up Figueroa Street from USC, Spectrum Sports Net analyst James Worthy took to the airwaves to wax poetic on his former teammate. He was more happy for Cooper’s ceremony,Worthy beamed, than he was for his own.
Cooper was the understated “pulse” of the “Showtime” Lakers, as Worthy called him.The next day, before USC’s practice on Jan. 15, Gottlieb gathered her aspiring dynasty and played that clip of Worthy. Her Trojans had won 12 games in a row, their most pressing issue seeming to be their lack of cold-weather gear on East Coast road trips. Beneath, though, a new-look roster was trying to grasp individual places in a free-flowing offense that – despite a common goal – has yet to completely gel. “When we do things that get everyone a ring,” Gottlieb recounted telling her team, punctuating the clip, “the ring doesn’t say how many points you scored, or whether you came off the bench, or started.” “And that’s what you organically want to get to, when you talk about being happier for someone else than you are for yourself.” After practice wrapped that day, she dangled her legs off a training table on a practice court at USC, temporarily weightless despite the weight of expectations on her shoulders. These were no longer the days of, of an empty Galen Center and a mishmash roster. The JuJu Watkins revolution has been televised, and in came as much talent as any team in the country this winter. The vision Gottlieb had, when she first left her post in the NBA for USC in 2021, had arrived faster than anyone could have predicted. “I would probably say,” Gottlieb told the Southern California News Group then, “it’s unlike any other year, I think, in all my years of being a head coach, of being an assistant coach – it’s very unique.”that Watkins is by no means the only player of importance on USC’s roster, but the TV network frenzy aroundof her impact. At the same time, as assistant coach Wendale Farrow put it in mid-January, there are “challenges” to best support the individual aspirations of an overwhelming array of talent on USC’s roster.the read-and-react nature of Gottlieb’s system as opposed to more set touches in her previous stop at Stanford. Talia Von Oelhoffen, previously a four-year starter at Oregon State, has been open about her struggles to find herself in a more diminished offensive role at USC. Watkins, too, has The sixth-ranked Trojans are still a juggernaut (21-2 overall, 11-2 Big Ten) unlike few in the game. But they face the toughest test of their season on Thursday night against top-ranked crosstown rival UCLA (23-0, 11-0 Big Ten), a program clicking on all cylinders, a week that Von Oelhoffen called a potential “turning point” for USC to unlock its full potential. And the Trojans’ ability to hit that ceiling – on Thursday, and into March – will fall under Gottlieb’s steady hand, a coach who has long operated with a greater purpose no matter the level of expectation. “There’s just no way I can please 14 people with playing time, and with points, and rebounds,” Gottlieb told the Southern California News Group on Tuesday, speaking on her coaching principles. “You can’t.” “But what I can say is, we’re going to be who we said we’re going to be in terms of the relationships,” she continued, “and doing whatever we can to help them in their lives.” Years after running more traditional, post-heavy sets in a previous stop at Cal, Gottlieb has fully embraced a pro-style offense at USC, heavily influenced by her two-year stint from 2019 to 2021 as an assistant coach with the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers. Gottlieb’s time in the league was an “unbelievable stop” for Watkins, as Gottlieb’s mentor Joanne Boyle once described last year to the SCNG, giving a high-volume guard full reign to ebb and flow. And USC’s offense began to coalesce in 2023-24, Forbes recalled, around Watkins’ strengths, with frequent touches in the mid-post down the stretch of a scorching Elite Eight run in the NCAA Tournament. That system requires high-IQ freedom, and defined roles around Watkins. And USC’s transfers, and a top-ranked freshman class, chose to come to USC because of the chance to play with Watkins, a superstar who operates without ego and who Gottlieb has always encouraged to“You have to have the confidence in yourself – and I think that’s what Lindsay has – where you’re not insecure, and worried about, like, the optics of what it might look like if you’re allowing a player of JuJu’s caliber to be herself and express herself fully,” said Detroit Pistons head coach J.B. Bickerstaff, a coaching friend of Gottlieb’s and a former colleague with the Cavaliers. It’s brought plenty of adjustment, to be sur
Juju Watkins Lindsay Gottlieb USC Trojans Women's Basketball NCAA Basketball NBA Influence Team Chemistry Shared Vision Selflessness
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