Hoopers, Nerds and Aunties: How USC women's basketball bridged its' eras and is again a contender.
After decades of wandering, the Women of Troy are home: as one of the premier power programs on the west coast.
1982 in Los Angeles was the epicenter of a cultural earthquake.
Pat Riley won his first NBA championship with what we now know as the ‘Showtime’ Lakers.
Stephen Spielberg capped off a five year movie run that started with Jaws and bookended with E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, ushering in a new era of Hollywood filmmaking.
Michael Jackson released Thriller, cementing his status as the King of Pop.
And, in the neighborhood known as Exposition Park, Rhonda Windham and Cheryl Miller arrived on the campus of the University of Southern California.
The O.G. Era (1980-1987)
It was a long journey from the Bronx to L.A. but Rhonda was looking forward to it. She was a city kid, through and through, and needed a city atmosphere wherever she went to college. The south was off her list and Southern California seemed interesting. When she arrived on campus she couldn’t believe her eyes.
“When [USC] brought me out here on my recruiting trip and tried to apologize for the area that USC was in, I’m thinking ‘are these folks crazy?!’” she recalls. “There’s palm trees everywhere. There’s houses with grass everywhere. Sign me up for this!”
Recruiting rules back then were different. A visit involved meeting prospective coaches and support staff as well as seeing the campus. But there was one key rule that was notably different than today’s: You could practice with the team.
That’s how Rhonda got hooked.
“The McGee twins were there and Cynthia Cooper was playing, also Juliet Robinson and Yolanda Fletcher. I remember them at the practice and we got the ball and started going and I said ‘Okay, I got two 6’3 sisters on both sides. And this other chick is talking a lot of noise. I know we can do some things.’”
"The twins cornered me in the locker room after practice and said ‘hey, we think we can do some things. We’re going after this other player, Cheryl Miller. Are you coming?’ And they needed a point guard. I needed a team. It was a match made in heaven.”
The success came immediately. With Windham running point, the McGee twins in the paint and the tandem of Cooper and Miller dominating all over the floor, USC had officially arrived.
The next four years included two straight national titles and another trip to the Final Four. Miller was a bonafied star, viewed by many as the next evolution of the game and someone who could challenge the conventional notions of women in sport at the time. Cooper was right there with her, a force in all sides of the floor and Millers’ foil in more ways than one. Both challenged each other, in games and in practices. And the McGee sisters —dominant 6 foot 3 twins in their own right — possessed a unique understanding of the cultural moment. As Los Angeles leaned into an era punctuated by glitz and excess, so too did the Women of Troy.
“There was a lot of Hollywood antics to what we did,” says Windham. “And it just added [to it], but it only worked because we were winning.”
Soon, floor seats at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena started to become reserved for stars. Chevy Chase, Penny Marshall and —Windham’s favorite— Magic Johnson started to become fixtures at games.
“I kind of ignored him at first,” Windham says of Magic. “But then he’s like ‘I like the way you pat that ball!’ That meant everything to me. You can create an environment where it’s the place you want to be or be seen.”
It was an era that felt like it could last forever. The star power of Los Angeles, the rich recruiting footprint of southern California, the allure of living among the sun and the stars and a culture that embraced women’s basketball. But, as programs before and after have learned, sustaining success can be harder than building it.
Troy’s Last Stand (1992-1994)
Linda Sharp’s resignation from USC was the inevitable change every power program faces in any sport, pro to prep. It seemed, for a time, that Marianne Stanley would be up to the task. She wasn’t new to dynasties, having created one of her own —and one of the originals in women’s basketball— at Old Dominion. She had two AIAW titles and another NCAA championship to her name by the time she came to Los Angeles.
As luck would have it, Stanley’s arrival coincided with the rise of a new name in the city. A young woman from Compton, uniquely ambidextrous, who was dominating everyone to such a degree that entire teams weren’t enough to guard her. She was the greatest star to come out of Morningside High School in Inglewood. And her name was Lisa Leslie.
“She always played in the Summer League for the Say No Classic,” says Windham. “And I would have a draft. And I remember one guy traded basically his whole team so he could draft Lisa Leslie in the summer league.”
It was clear. She was next.
The pieces felt there again. Lisa Leslie, Tina Thompson, Nicky McCrimmon and Michelle Campbell. The run was coming just like in the 80’s.
Until it didn’t.
Stanley was let go after a highly publicized and acrimonious contract dispute with Athletic Director Mike Garrett. Cheryl Miller came in to coach and managed to lead the team to an Elite Eight in 1993. It was the last time they’d ever make it to the second week of the NCAA Tournament.
“They had been building,” Windham explains. “And we were getting some momentum. And then Coach Stanley and USC got into a whole legal battle. Lisa didn’t have [Stanley] her senior year. Cheryl came in. She’s a new, young coach. It was a tough situation. Everyone was trying to do the best at the time.”
Leslie went on to the WNBA and the Los Angeles Sparks, where she became one of the most recognizable faces in women’s basketball. But her alma mater began to fade into the mist.
Immaculata, Delta State, Old Dominion, Louisiana Tech, Cheyney State, Western Kentucky, Long Beach State. All once proud power programs that became lost to history. Consigned to pages in media guides, in dusty photos and film from RCA cameras. USC appeared to suffer that same fate, making just three NCAA Tournament appearances in the next 25 years.
Until the giant decided to wake up.
Rebuilding the Bridges (2021)
Lindsay Gottlieb’s first goal was an easy one: bring back the legends. There was history at USC, even if it didn’t happen at the Galen Center. It was time to honor it.
“Tapping into the USC women’s basketball history is tapping into the greatest players that have ever lived in women’s basketball, not just at USC,” she explains. “We need to rebuild what USC women’s basketball was about right now, but doing that at the same time, I thought I could create this connection to the past.”
At last, the door reopened.
‘The aunties’, as Windham affectionately calls her and her cohort, were finally coming home.
“Any athlete, once you finish playing, you have this separation from your programs,” says Windham. “You miss it. And then you don’t want to impose yourself. You want to be welcomed. And that’s what [Coach Gottlieb] has done since day one.”
But in rebuilding a program, it’s not enough to bridge a gap between eras. A coach also has to find the players, put them together and bring the eras to the floor. One of Gottlieb’s first finds was a former player, McKenzie Forbes, who played at Cal with Gottlieb before she went to coach in the NBA. Her big win on the recruiting trail harkened back to what made the original eras so special: an elite player, who came up on the courts in Los Angeles and was ready to resurrect a giant.
“I had to trust in Coach Gottlieb from the moment that I found out she’d be SC’s new head coach,” remembers junior forward Rayah Marshall. “It wasn’t a doubt in mind.”
Not a doubt in her mind but maybe some doubt on the outside. The new look Women of Troy’s first season was a 12-16 finish, good for 10th in the Pac-12. Nine players went out, including future Pac-12 Player of the Year Alissa Pili. In came seven transfers and one recruit, Aaliyah Gayles.
“We kind of said ‘this is what our culture is going to be,’ Gottlieb says. “‘Here are the six and we got to go supplement in the portal. And that group right there really, really bet on us.”
With that group, USC went 21-10 and made it back to the NCAA Tournament, just their third since 2000. It felt like all the pieces were falling into place again but what every coach and program needs is a game changer. Dawn Staley had an A’ja Wilson. Geno Auriemma had a Rebecca Lobo.
In the spring of 2023, Lindsay Gottlieb got hers.
Together at Last (2023)
Juju Watkins’ arrival in Los Angeles felt, at the time, like the awakening of a giant. The number one recruit in the class, coveted by every major program in America, choosing to put on for the city she grew up in. Much like Cheryl Miller before her, there was a symmetry to how the original Women of Troy were built and what Gottlieb was building now.
“We have a lot of kids from the city on the team,” says Marshall. “If you slide the curtains back [of the Galen Center], you could have a view like downtown, high-rise buildings and palm trees. Our family is just everywhere, placed all over Galen, behind our bench, across from our bench. It’s really nice to have all that support.”
From 1980 to 2023, the bridging of the eras was finally here.
At the home opener in the Galen Center in November, the program honored the 1984 National Championship team. The last time they had all gathered together was in 2002, to celebrate the title teams ahead of a game with Pat Summitt’s Tennessee Volunteers. USC lost that game 71-39.
Fast forward to a January night in 2024. In a full Galen Center, with not just that championship team but decades of alums at their back, USC hosted UCLA and the No. 9 Women of Troy upset the No. 2 Bruins.
“We had 50 alums come back,” says Windham. “50 alumni from our basketball program. First time that’s ever happened. We all came back. It was a beautiful thing.”
“I had a moment before the UCLA [home] game,” Gottlieb recalls. “[Some alums] said they had never been invited back as an entity. Like, for a game or to do a pregame reception. And the moment we had before [the game]…To have this place sold out, to have lines out the door and all these women here pregame…was incredible.”
With the wealth of knowledge at their disposal, Gottlieb has encouraged her players to lean on ‘the aunties’. Watkins, who is on a shortlist to be the next super star in women’s college basketball, spends time with Miller.
“She reminds me of both Cynthia Cooper and Kobe [Bryant]”, Windham says of Watkins.
Windham herself, says McKenzie Forbes is her mentee. She texted the starting guard words of encouragement before the Pac-12 semifinal, in which USC beat UCLA again, this time in overtime. Forbes, a member of the group of Ivy League transfers known as ‘the nerds’, played 48 minutes and scored 17 in the win over the Bruins. Two nights later, she scored 26 and led the Women of Troy to a conference title over Stanford. There, with a microphone in her face and a champions hat on her head, Forbes returned the favor to Windham and ‘the aunties’ on national television.
““We stand on the shoulders of giants,” Forbes told ESPN’s Holly Rowe after the title win. “The people who came before us, Cheryl (Miller), Lisa (Leslie), Tina (Thompson). We love you guys. They’ve been supporting us all season. This is for you guys.”
To hear one of her players say that meant everything to the coach tasked with bringing it all back together.
“I’m so honored,” Gottlieb says. “Whatever attention it shines on Cheryl and Cooper and Lisa and Tina and the McGee’s and everybody else — Rhonda — that makes us super happy.”
In 1986, Linda Sharp’s team won the first ever Pac-10 title. 28 years later, Lindsay Gottlieb’s team, standing on the shoulders of all that came before, held the final Pac-12 trophy that will ever be given out in women’s basketball. A team of historical symmetry ended an era of west coast hoops the same way.
And for them all, from the hoopers, to the nerds, to the aunties, it was done together.
“We’re not a fractured program,” says Windham. “They’re not by themselves but on the court we expect all they have. We’re not coaches but we’re here to support. We’re here to encourage.”
“And it’s a joy to watch them,” she continues. “It’s a joy to be part of the resurgence of our program. And it’s in great hands.”