Trojans Show Progress, but It’s Not Quite Enough

USC’s not-quite-ready-for-prime-time women’s basketball team still isn’t, although Coach Chris Gobrecht’s Trojans showed signs Monday night that they are inching ever closer.

USC, unranked but unbeaten after two games, pushed No. 16 Texas Tech into overtime before losing, 66-63, at the Sports Arena.

The Trojans actually had control in the second half with leads of as many as nine points, and a six-point margin with two minutes to play. But the more poised, more experienced Lady Raiders refused to fold and got the game into overtime with a half jump shot, half sidearm fling from 10 feet out by freshman Pienette Pierson with one second to play.

“It was my first-ever buzzer-beater,� said the 6-foot-1 Pierson.

Gobrecht played for the Trojans in the late 1970s and quickly moved into the Division I coaching ranks with the same fire and intensity with which she played. Soon, she had become one of the youngest-ever in the women’s ranks to get her 300th win, doing so at age 39 four years ago.

So, after her highly successful run, mostly at Washington, the Trojans decided she needed to come home and get them back to the good old days of Cheryl Miller and Linda Sharp and national championships.

But it hasn’t been easy, as her 12-15 and 7-20 records of the last two seasons attest, and her third team is built from eight new players, a couple of them key transfers.

That’s why Monday night’s game was both a huge frustration and glint of hope.

“It was typical of a team that hasn’t played together,� Gobrecht said. “In the end, we stopped doing what got us there, and we just let them come and take the game away from us. It’s a hard lesson for a team that hasn’t done this before.�

At the same time, Gobrecht is not fond of spins or alibis.

“I expected us to win this game,� she said. “Yes, they are ranked and we aren’t, but I think we are pretty good, and I came into the game expecting us to win.�

The Trojans, playing in a town currently featuring No. 5-ranked UCLA, need some sort of jump start, and Monday night was a chance for that. They had not defeated a ranked team since the 1995-96 season, when Fred Williams’ team upset No. 22 Oregon State, 67-66.

But close calls and good efforts are not what Gobrecht is about, and this was not the kind of result that improves upon the crowd of 582 that jangled around inside the Sports Arena, where USC, with all but four of its women’s home games scheduled, pays between $7,000-$10,000 a night to rent.

“This is a good team that just has a lot of toughening up to do,� said Gobrecht, who spent enough of her career in prime time to know what that’s all about.