‘Things started to crumble’ as fouls, sloppy play dooms Nebraska basketball at USC

Amy Williams called timeout, marched onto the floor and showed some fire.

In the fourth quarter of her teams 75-55 defeat at No.

4 USC, the Nebraska womens basketball coach appeared entirely fed up with her teams ability to break the Trojans press.

We had the wrong person taking the ball out of bounds after a made basket, we were not in the middle of the floor where we needed to help each other to break the press, Williams said on her postgame radio show.

We lost our focus for a quick second when things started to crumble.

What had been just a 39-34 deficit at halftime devolved another lopsided loss.

Its NUs third in a row, following road defeats at Georgia Tech and UCLA.

The Huskers (10-4, 1-2) played USC (13-1, 3-0) more closely than they did the Bruins, but NUs offense disappeared in the second half, as Nebraska didnt score for the first six minutes of the fourth quarter and made just 7 of 30 shots after halftime.

The Huskers struggled to keep from fouling USC star JuJu Watkins, as well.

Watkins, a favorite for national player of the year, finished with 26 points hitting 11 of 12 from the free throw line.

She drew 12 fouls, including a couple when she didnt have the ball.

One of them, a late third quarter collision with Husker forward Kendall Coley, resulted a technical foul on Coley for arguing the call.

Watkins made 3 of 4 free throws in that moment.

In that third quarter, we fouled way too much, put them to the free throw line, Williams said.

Not what we wanted to do.

Having JuJu not be the leader in field goal attempts was part of the defensive strategy, to show some attention to her.

When she goes to the free throw line 12 times, that kind of negates it.

In the first half, a foul Watkins drew away from the ball eventually led to a five-point possession.

Watkins star wattage, coupled with Nebraskas 18 turnovers and USCs 25 points off of them were too much to overcome.

The Huskers were led by Logan Nissley 14 points off of 4 of 5 shooting from 3), Britt Prince (10 points, eight rebounds) and Alexis Markowski (seven points, nine rebounds).

Husker sophomore post Jess Petrie opened scoring with an un-and-under putback before USC took early control of the action, building a 16-8 lead on Watkins ability to drive to dish or draw a foul.

After she hit a transition layup for the eight-point pad, Nebraska put together a 11-2 run, spanning the first and second quarters, that included two mid-range jumpers from Prince and a 3-pointer from Logan Nissley.

NUs lead got as big as five at 30-25 before Watkins fueled a late first half surge.

As her teammate, Avery Howell, hit a corner 3-pointer, Watkins also drew off-the-ball contact from Husker guard Kendall Moriarty, whose foul created the rare five-point possession for the Trojans.

After USC tied the game at 30, Watkins hit a layup, then splashed a step-back 3 over Princes outstretched arms.

Petrie, in perhaps the strongest half of her career, answered with her own 3, but the Trojans still led 39-34 at halftime.

Just 20 seconds into the second half, official Kim Hobbs suffered a non-contact injury, fell to the floor, and had to be helped off the court.

She did not return.

NUs defense held up for much of the third quarter and the team trailed just 49-42 with 2:32 left in the third.

USC finished on a 10-3 run that included the Coley technical foul and Watkins free throws.

With the holiday road swing in Los Angeles in the rearview mirror, NU returns home for home games against Penn State which lost 80-68 to Iowa on Wednesday and Michigan State, which beat Purdue 77-59.

We wanted to win on the road and show we can do that, and we didnt, Williams said.

So what can we learn from this? How can we be able to put everything in perspective and know and say were still a really good basketball team.

Weve got to come home and take care of some of the small things that are separators right now for us with the top-15 teams.

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