Rayah Marshall sets the tone for No. 4 USC in win over No. 25 Illinois

When Lindsay Gottlieb was hired at USC in May 2021, her first call went to Rayah Marshall. She was standing in her kitchen in Ohio at the time, uncertain if Marshall, then a McDonald’s All-American, would even consider honoring the commitment she’d made to USC’s previous coach.

Gottlieb didn’t have much tangible to sell her on, after all. She’d spent the previous three seasons in the NBA, while USC, once a women’s basketball powerhouse, had spent the previous three decades toiling in relative obscurity. All Gottlieb had to show Marshall was a vision of what USC could be.

Fortunately for USC’s coach, Marshall could see what she saw then. Almost four years later, as Marshall emerged from the Galen Center tunnel for her final regular season home game, that vision was almost fully realized. The former Lynwood High star had been there for it all — the brutal 12-16 debut, the triumphant return to the NCAA tournament in 2022, the arrival of JuJu Watkins and the sudden ascent that followed.

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Marshall had been the backbone of that breakthrough, the sturdy foundation on which it had been built. Along the way, the 6-foot-4 center had been content to do the dirty work, swatting shots and vacuuming up the glass as others draped themselves in the glory. But as the whole of Galen Center stood in her honor Sunday, Marshall smiled wide and flexed to the crowd, before raising a bursting bouquet of red roses into the air.

Marshall certainly got her flowers Sunday in an 76-66 win over Illinois, turning in a trademark performance befitting her four years at USC. The senior tallied her fourth double-double of the season, stuffing the statsheet with not just 12 points and 13 rebounds but also five assists and four steals — both team highs.

“This,” Gottlieb said, “is what we call juicy Rayah.”

It was exactly what the coach had hoped she was getting when she first made that phone call four years earlier. Though, along the way, it didn’t always go so smoothly. Her freshman season, in particular, had more than a few games, Marshall said, that felt more like closed scrimmages than big-time college basketball.

Illinois’ Genesis Bryant, center, is fouled while shooting between USC’s Clarice Akunwafo, left, and guard JuJu Watkins during the first half Sunday.

(William Liang / Associated Press)

“You heard the saying ‘Started from the bottom now we’re here?’” Marshall said. “It was really a culture shift.”

Her role transformed along the way too. As USC continued growing in Gottlieb’s plan, Marshall’s opportunities dwindled. That proved especially true over the past year as Watkins rose to stardom and Kiki Iriafen stepped in as one of the nation’s best secondary weapons. In turn, Marshall has averaged just 7.3 points per game this season, her fewest in four years. But it was Marshall who jolted the Trojans back to life Sunday, pulling them out of one of the worst shooting slumps of their season. USC had missed 14 in a row from the field between the second and third quarters, giving Illinois ample chance to climb back and take a 42-41 lead midway through the third.

That’s when USC unleashed a full-court press, with Marshall and her uncommon length on the frontline of a suffocating trap. Then Iriafen found Marshall under the basket for an easy bucket. A few seconds after that, Marshall stepped in front of an Illinois pass for a steal, one of four she had Sunday. The steal turned into a breakaway lay-in, which turned into a breakaway run for USC.

All the tension of a season-worst slump slipped away. USC hit six of seven from the field and bolted to a nine-point lead. It kept growing from there.

USC looked primed to pummel Illinois early, as the Trojans dominated the paint, hitting two-thirds of their attempts in the first quarter. Watkins opened with eight quick points, along with Iriafen. It seemed likely USC would ride its two stars the rest of the way, like it had so often before.

Both still got their chances. But Watkins hit just one of her six attempts from the field in the second half. She still scored 22 points, while Iriafen, also playing in her final regular-season game at Galen, added 22.

It was a fitting statement ahead of next Saturday’s rematch with UCLA, which will decide the Big Ten regular-season conference title.

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But the roots of Sunday’s matinee win ran much deeper than that. It brought Marshall back to a moment in her freshman year when, after an unlikely win over Arizona, Gottlieb pulled aside Marshall and fellow center Clarice Akunwafo.

“She told us, we’re going to be a top-five team by the time our senior year got here,” Marshall remembered. “We’re going to run the conference. And me and Clarice would look at each other like, is this woman OK? Is she serious? But look at us now. We bought in. We trust in Coach G. Now we’re here. A top-five team in the country.”