USC women dethrone Stanford in a triumphant win to clinch the Pac-12 championship

LAS VEGAS – She strutted back to the huddle during a fourth-quarter timeout, not an ounce of emotion in McKenzie Forbes’ eyes, USC’s bench raucous and rowdy after another triple dropped home. Stone-cold.

On Tuesday, five days before a momentous, final Pac-12 showdown with Stanford, JuJu Watkins provided a simple insight into her worldview: the game of basketball is about who can adapt the fastest. For months, in a dazzling freshman season, it had been Watkins who’d adjusted, approaching a new scheme designed to slow her. Except it was Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer who adjusted to her on Sunday afternoon in the Pac-12 championship, throwing a trap at Watkins off every ball-screen, unwilling to repeat an earlier February outcome where Watkins had authored a 51-point Renaissance painting in Stanford’s gym.

And Watkins was stymied, a chance to single-handedly lead USC (25-5) to the final true Pac-12 title crumbling before her. She scored just 9 points on 2-of-15 shooting, going without a field goal in the first half, trudging to the bench after one sub in the second half and slumping her head between her legs.

An entire program picked her up, in a resounding statement of a 74-61 win over Stanford (28-4), dethroning the conference’s gold standard in the final game in the conference’s as-presently-constructed history.

It started with Forbes, answering the bat-signal as Watkins was relegated to the shadows, calling her own number and making tough shot after tough shot in a 26-point masterpiece. It continued with Rayah Marshall, the unflappable big battling for 30 minutes against a dominant Stanford frontcourt in a 10-point, 18-rebound scrap. It ended in sheer jubilation in Vegas, eventual tournament-MVP Forbes fittingly ending up dribbling out the clock as the buzzer sounded, shedding the veil of unflappability as she flung the ball over her head to the heavens.

History, for coach Lindsay Gottlieb, the first Pac-12 tournament win in her long conference history, once a longtime coach at Cal. History, for USC, a program en route to a likely no. 1 seed when Selection Sunday rolls around next week, a program that has risen back to the forefront of national collegiate women’s basketball.

“This is a win,” Gottlieb said on the JumboTron on the floor of MGM Grand Garden Arena, “for the whole University of Southern California.”

It was a dream that began with Gottlieb’s arrival three years ago, an exponential program trajectory culminating in one singular moment recruiting a transcendent freshman and surrounding her with a bevy of irreplaceable supporting acts. USC’s run to the Pac-12 title game hasn’t simply been Watkins arriving and Atlas-shouldering the program. Every single member of the roster, from the Ivy League transfers so affectionately dubbed “The Nerds” to the holdovers at the end of the bench, have bought completely into their roles under Gottlieb.

At times in USC’s semifinal win over UCLA Friday night, Watkins looked visibly upset and scrunched her eyebrows at Forbes’ decision-making, the never-short-on-confidence Harvard grad often waving off others to call for a ball-screen in a rough 5-of-20 shooting night. But Forbes’ gumption was irreplaceable in the first half, earning her a place on the postgame podium on the floor of MGM Grand Garden as this tournament’s MVP, bursting into tears at mention of her family in the stands.

On one early pull-up jumper, Forbes leaned to the floor and put her hand to her ankle in a too-small taunt. Off one turnover, USC thriving early on doubling down on Stanford stars Cameron Brink and Iriafen in the post, she dribbled up and swished a heat-check triple from beyond the top of the key, turning to the courtside seats on her way back down.

“They can’t (expletive) guard me!” Forbes erupted, scoring 10 of USC’s first 18.

Brink started to get going in the second quarter, dropping in 13 points by halftime in showing her full repertoire – face-ups, triples, bruising finishes on the inside. But reverse big Clarice Akunwafo, who has been a key all season in helping check some of the Pac-12’s best bigs in limited minutes, frustrated Brink in the post and feasted on the offensive glass. When Watkins exited, frustrated, backup guard Kayla Williams subbed in and immediately caught fire, hitting a couple of corner threes. Forbes capped off a brilliant half with a snaking, crane-legged floater before the break, bellowing to her bench as USC exited the floor with a nine-point lead.

Watkins notched her first points from the floor with 4:37 left in the third quarter, a layup, giving USC an 11-point lead. She didn’t score again the rest of the quarter, Stanford guarding her tough in the post, a hand in her face on every jumper.

Didn’t matter.

Marshall gave USC a lift at the start of the quarter, dropping in a couple layups, her energy a difference-maker all night in battling one of the best frontcourts in the nation. Forbes continued to bet on herself in Vegas and hit, canning a momentum-sealing triple to give USC a 16-point lead exactly seven seconds after she’d airballed a turnaround jumper. And with Stanford threatening at times in the fourth quarter, Forbes burst through on a breakaway and finished a layup with mere seconds remaining to close the win, roaring as she put her stamp on the final iteration of Pac-12 women’s basketball.

Padilla added 13 points on 3-of-6 shooting from deep. Brink dropped 19 points and 10 rebounds for Stanford, while Iriafen had 18.