Don't really know what to make of this team. (And neither does Graves, based on his last 3 postgames.) The loss to Arizona wasn't surprising (but the margin/quality of play was). And then the more than disappointing loss to Arizona State. And then this. . . . with a trip to Corvallis on Friday. So far, consistency has been something of a tease.
Never know what will happen in a...not the Civil War game anymore, so whatever you call it. Beavs have inspired no confidence in me at all in their ability to beat good teams. I guess maybe if you count Colorado or UCLA, but that's questionable.
Gylten and Martin are both out, and Maxwell hasn't been playing very well lately. Plus Pendande transferred out. It's been almost entirely newcomers that have led to the improvement. McQueen and McFarland have been playing fairly well.
For some odd reason he does not realize that other schools are doing it. Maybe it is how they prep. Meanwhile, UCLA and Oregon got together to schedule a game after UCLA had to forfeit. This was not really necessary.
Rueck is almost Tara-like in the way he preps scouting defenses for his team, so that may matter more to him than to other teams whose defenses don't adjust as much to the opposing offense. Though as applied to Oregon, it's a bit of a weird critique since almost all of Oregon's production is back from last season, and his Beavs faced Endiya Rogers several times when she was in a Trojans uniform, so it's not like they haven't seen most of these players multiple times before...
what the heck happened?
They were always mediocre under Trakh. They have to be hoping for mediocre at this point. I didn't think it was a great hire, Gottlieb got very diminishing returns in her later years at Cal. Still I didn't expect anything like this. I just figured the status quo would stay about the same.
You sort of have to look to next season. They have Gayles coming in, who is a top recruit in any forum but no one else. Will the transfer recruits see USC as an appealing destination when the Trojans finish in the bottom three of their conference? A top recruit, certainly not. If Pilli and Jenkins transfer, I would say this is almost certainly a last place team next season.
2 minutes before Cate got teed up Meals Giles was hit with an intentional foul. It was physical it was rough just like any territorial cup game. CTT's team had what it took and we had just enough defense to close them down.
Congrats on a big win! This might get you in the tournament.
You don't like Adia "the bird" Barnes
