BLOOMINGTON — For USC women’s basketball coach Lindsay Gottlieb, Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall lived up to her expectations — and more.
“What an incredible atmosphere,” Gottlieb said following USC’s 73-66 win over IU on Sunday. “It was everything I heard it would be, as a basketball person, the history of Assembly Hall. All the fans here delivered, it was a great basketball game.”
IU women’s basketball has a history of raucous fan support — the Hoosiers averaged over 10,000 fans per game in the 2023-24 season, just the fifth time that happened in Big Ten women’s basketball.
On Sunday, fans were itching to come and see one of the new faces of women’s college basketball, JuJu Watkins, as USC made its first trip to Bloomington since the Trojans joined the Big Ten.
“I honestly didn’t know what to expect, but I guess all expectations went out the window,” Watkins said. “It was really nice to feel the crowd, and it was crazy.”
Nearly 13,000 fans came into Assembly Hall to watch IU take on No. 5 USC, and it had everything a women’s basketball fan would want: an emerging star in Watkins, a projected No. 2 draft pick in USC senior Kiki Iriafen and a top-5 team in the country.
And those fans — the majority of which were Hoosiers, apart from a small USC family contingent — made sure to be active. They cheered during IU’s runs, booed when they didn’t like a referee’s call and made it hard for the Trojans to hear each other during plays.
It was something relatively new for the Trojans in conference play — they didn’t see crowds like this in the Pac-12. It’s also something, as one of the top teams in the country, they’re embracing.
“I never experienced nothing like this in the Pac-12,” USC senior Rayah Marshall said. “No shade to the Pac-12, but crowds like this, we’re calling our plays and it’s kind of hard to hear whether it’s our close calling, our playing cards. It really was exciting playing in this type of atmosphere.”
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Juju Watkins, USC applaud Assembly Hall fans, Indiana atmosphere
