The Times of Troy: USC women's basketball team deals with transfer portal losses

Los Angeles Times

21-04-2025

Hi, everyone! Welcome back to the Times of Troy newsletter. I'm Ryan Kartje, your USC beat writer with The Times, here to assure you that I will not be entering the transfer portal. Though, the Times of Troy will be taking a summer break starting in May. Which means next Monday will be our last newsletter for a while. But never fear! We'll be back every Monday starting in late July, to get you ready for football season.
Hey, maybe by then college sports will have figured out its portal problem! Or maybe pigs will have learned to fly! I'm not sure which is more likely at this point.
Fortunately, the portal is closing for basketball (April 22) and football (April 28) within the next week. And for coaches across the country, all of whom agree this model is unsustainable, that day can't come soon enough.
But today, I want to focus on one particular coach's experience in the portal. Because after largely avoiding its chaos the last three years, the last 30 days have been a perfect storm in the portal for Lindsay Gottlieb and USC's women's basketball program.
It was just three weeks ago that we got a glimpse of how the Women of Troy might weather a world without JuJu Watkins next season. That night, in Spokane, Wash., hope had seemingly arrived in the form of three Trojan freshmen — Kennedy Smith, Avery Howell and Kayleigh Heckel — each of whom rose to the occasion on the biggest stage of their basketball lives, announcing themselves in a Sweet 16 win as fixtures in the future of USC women's hoops.
'What can I say about our freshman class?' Gottlieb said, beaming at Howell and Smith from the postgame podium. 'They're winners above everything else.'
But the future, as we envisioned that night, lasted less than a week. Howell was in the transfer portal just three days after USC lost to Connecticut in the Elite Eight. Heckel followed the next day.
Neither Howell nor Heckel, as I understand it, left for monetary reasons. Rather, both chose to leave USC for a new role and new opportunity somewhere they felt they better fit, somewhere they might one day take on a true leading role. That wasn't going to happen at USC. Not with a ball-dominant superstar at the center of plans through 2027. And another young star, Jazzy Davidson, inbound this summer.
The irony is that both would have played major roles as sophomores, with Watkins sure to miss at least most of the regular season recovering from a torn anterior cruciate ligament. But once she returns, hopefully in time for the tournament, both would have presumably slipped back into supporting roles.
That wasn't enough for Howell, who transferred to Washington, or Heckel, who still hasn't settled on her new home. (Never mind the fact that USC's No. 2 weapon behind Watkins this season, Kiki Iriafen, was just drafted No. 4 overall.)
Gottlieb did what she could to get both involved as freshmen, weathering their growing pains along the way. Her staff spent valuable time developing them. But there were never quite enough minutes to go around, and they both still left anyway. Now another school will reap the benefits.
It leaves coaches such as Gottlieb with a frustrating dilemma: Why spend time investing in freshmen who aren't necessarily top prospects when you could just find plug-and-play veterans in the portal?
The sad reality, in college basketball's current state, is that a program simply can't have too many players who want to play, but it also can't have too few so as to struggle when losing a player or two to injury. This isn't just a USC problem. At Notre Dame, four players have entered the portal. At UCLA, every freshman from last year's class has entered the portal.
No one at USC is feeling sorry for themselves, even if the timing of it all proved particularly maddening. Playing with Watkins had been an obvious selling point to bigs in the portal such as Wisconsin's Serah Williams, arguably the top forward available, and Arizona's Breya Cunningham, who has since committed to Texas. Her injury, which happened the same day the portal opened, threw a wrench in those plans.
Similarly, had Heckel or Howell indicated they were leaving earlier, maybe USC could've been contenders for top transfer guard Olivia Miles, who left Notre Dame for Texas Christian. But that's simply not how it worked.
These are, of course, champagne problems. Gottlieb has built a program capable of withstanding two freshmen leaving in the transfer portal. Smith will be more of a factor on offense. Davidson, the No. 1 recruit in the country, according to ESPN, will make an immediate impact on both ends. Together, USC feels like it has two of the best wings in the nation in that pair.
The addition of Kara Dunn, an All-Atlantic Coast Conference guard from Georgia Tech, will give the Trojans a veteran presence in the backcourt, while another veteran guard should be on the way soon. Not to mention the fact that USC retained rising junior Malia Samuels, who proved valuable in her role last season.
USC will look different next season. It may not win 30 games again. But after what we've seen these past two years, through back-to-back Elite Eight trips, there's no reason to believe that what Gottlieb has built can't withstand some portal-related strife.
This is just how it goes in this new era, where future plans are meant to be broken and coaches are left to pick up the pieces and, somehow, put them back together again.
—USC's offensive line isn't set in stone. But it seems pretty close at this point. Elijah Paige, at left tackle, and Alani Noa, at right guard, were always locks to remain in their starting spots. J'Onre Reed, a veteran center, came to USC with the intention of stepping in as a starter. The only two question marks came at left guard and right tackle. But at left guard, transfer DJ Wingfield has, according to Lincoln Riley, been even better than anticipated. 'It looks like he's been with us forever,' Riley said of Wingfield. As for right tackle, Riley said earlier this spring that Tobias Raymond had established himself as one of the best lineman on the team. Unless redshirt freshman tackle Justin Tauanuu makes a major leap in the fall or a touted transfer comes in to compete, you can probably count on the current five keeping their jobs.
—USC football secured its first transfer of the portal season. And even better: He's leaving Notre Dame for L.A.. Kennedy Urlacher, the son of Chicago Bears' Hall of Fame linebacker Brian, isn't likely to be a game-changing addition, at least not right away, but the Trojans were terribly thin at safety, and Urlacher gives them a young rotational player to develop behind Kamari Ramsey and Bishop Fitzgerald. USC seems destined to use a lot of three-safety looks this season, and the lion's share of Urlacher's looks as a freshman came in the box. Don't be surprised if he carves out a nice role in that rotation, alongside Christian Pierce, another ascending young safety.
—Eric Musselman has added six transfers so far. But are any of them difference-makers? In his second foray into the portal, Musselman has prioritized adding size, as all six of his additions stand 6-foot-6 or taller. Utah's Ezra Ausar is the most proven of the bunch, having played starter minutes for three seasons in Salt Lake City. Virginia's Jacob Cofie, a former top-100 recruit, has a lot of potential as a presence in the paint, and Keonte Jones, Jaden Brownell and Amarion Dickerson were each all-conference players, albeit in the Big West, Southern Conference and Horizon League, respectively. But this transfer class still needs more, particularly at the guard position. That help could come in the form of Maryland combo guard Rodney Rice, who has USC in his top three, or perhaps even Blake Harper, the fast-rising Howard guard who visited last week. Could either put USC over the top? Hard to say for sure. But a backcourt with one of them, plus Desmond Claude and freshman Alijah Arenas wouldn't be too shabby.
—The five-year eligibility rule in college athletics could soon be called into question. A litany of legal cases continue to chip away at whether the NCAA can actually enforce it. In a case that seeks to go further than the case involving Vanderbilt's Diego Pavia, a federal judge in New Jersey is considering a preliminary injunction for Rutgers safety Jett Elad, who the NCAA ruled had exhausted his eligibility because of a one-year stint at Garden City Community College. The Pavia ruling didn't waive the rule that eligibility must be completed within a five-year period. That could soon change.
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