Yes - and no. Gottlieb's theory of game plan was, and I quote, "let JuJu be Juju." That would not have flown with Tara at Stanford, Geno at UConn, or Dawn at SCAR. You earn your playing time at those schools, or you transfer (see Betts, Lauren; Rivers, Saniya; and half of UConn's late 2010s classes).
I personally thought Iriafen regressed this season as she stagnated offensively and did not get appreciably better on defense. And I was shocked to hear her say in an interview after their Sweet 16 win, "this season has been so challenging for me." Between $700k in NIL and the bright lights of LA, what was challenging? Maybe, just maybe, an unhelpful coaching dynamic and the recognition she was not actually growing as a player.
Can't speak to Heckel or Howell, but I have always thought Gottlieb is a bad choice if you want to develop as a player. Nice coach and a great human being, though.
I do and do not blame Gottlieb for these events. She is a coach players can develop their game under. Rayah Marshall is a perfect example of someone whose game improved quite nicely over her 4 years there. At the same time, I agree with all those who think the departures are an inevitable consequence of the ‘Juju show.’ Letting Juju be Juju looks like a weak coaching move.
But did Gottlieb have much choice in this? Once she’d recruited Juju, her hands were tied. Last year, other than Juju, she had assembled another USC roster that wouldn’t have been ranked in the top 20 or made the Sweet Sixteen. Forbes and Marshall alone, while solid players, were not going to carry them any farther, if they even got that far. But with Juju, USC became a national power, albeit a fragile one that couldn’t grow into anything given its reliance on portal players.
This is why Gottlieb’s next recruiting class was so stunning. She seemed on the verge of transforming a one-hit wonder into a perennial powerhouse with the addition of only one portal star, Iriafen. From this perspective, and in hindsight, adding Von Oelhoffen was a mistake. Maybe Gottlieb couldn’t have known it in advance, but she already had the core of a workable backcourt in her freshmen. In effect, she ended up creating too much competition for the players who could have the been the foundation of her backcourt going forward: Samuels, Howell, Heckel. And those two couldn’t have predicted that Von Oelhoffen would bolt from Ore St when they committed.
Could a relatively new coach in Gottlieb’s position have resisted recruiting Juju, or resisted giving her the keys to the team? It’s easy for us to see the consequences of this decision for her program and criticize her now. Adding Iriafen was probably a good move — who could resist that as well? But it wasn’t likely to help build a team culture that might ground a program for years or even decades. Hanging on to her freshmen was key and doing anything to drive them away is regrettable.
Team culture is the most important thing a coach has to attend to if she wants to create a program and not just a team. This is one of the things that drew us to admire Geno and UConn. Even we appreciate the culture he’s built, and we’re just observing from a distance. Imagine the impact it has on the young people who sign on for it. Even in the lean years, they come to love their team and their teammates. They may not always win NCs, but when they do it grows out of this foundation. And when the players move on to populate the W, it’s because the culture made it possible for them to learn the game together.
So, it’s a mixed picture with Gottlieb. Marshall developed into a solid player and a possible draft pick. But Juju is unlikely to change her game much in her four years. Worse yet, Heckel and Howell had no confidence the program they experienced as freshman would do enough for them. We saw similar things at UConn when McLean and Poffenbarger didn’t think Geno could help them realize their dreams. But their decisions didn’t look like an indictment of the culture at Storrs. By contrast, many here are inclined to think the departures at USC are exactly that.
