After entering February without a single Big Ten win, Indiana women's basketball has managed to give itself a fighting chance to make the Big Ten Tournament. Three straight victories over Northwestern on Feb. 1, Wisconsin on Feb. 4 and Purdue on Sunday boosted the Hoosiers from 17th to tied for 14th, allowing them to breath slightly easier in their upcoming games.
Indiana travels to the West Coast for two games over four days. First, the Hoosiers take on USC at 10 p.m. Thursday at the Galen Center in Los Angeles.
Against Purdue on Sunday, senior guard Shay Ciezki led Indiana with 29 points. Her performance added to the 37 points she logged in the first contest versus Purdue, which ended in an 80-69 defeat for the Hoosiers in the 33rd Barn Burner Trophy game Jan. 25.
Ciezki, the Big Ten’s leading scorer with 24.1 points per game, has reached her best form of the season during the Hoosiers’ winning streak. Her 29 points against the Boilermakers are the fewest points she has scored in the last three games.
Ciezki also managed to pull down 12 rebounds against Purdue, earning her second double-double of the season. Junior forward Edessa Noyan also logged a double-double with 12 points and 10 rebounds against the Boilermakers – her first double-double of the season.
Freshman guard Nevaeh Caffey was the only other Hoosier to reach double-digit points, chipping in 11 for her sixth game of the season with 10 or more points. Caffey logged 37 minutes against the Boilermakers, which was third on the team, as redshirt sophomore guard Lenée Beaumont played 39 minutes and Ciezki never exited the court.
All of Indiana’s wins in the Big Ten so far have come against teams in the bottom half of the standings, with Wisconsin, tied for 12th-place, being the highest ranked. USC features in the top half of the Big Ten standings, currently tied for eighth place with a 7-6 conference record.
Much like the Hoosiers, the Trojans struggled to start their Big Ten campaign. USC began conference play with a 3-6 Big Ten record, losing six of its last seven games with its sole win coming over Purdue 83-57 on Jan. 18.
USC suffered its most recent loss to No. 7 Michigan, falling 73-67 on Jan. 25. The Trojans then went on to beat then-No. 8 Iowa on Jan. 29, leading to a four-game winning streak. Most recently, USC defeated Illinois on the road 70-62 on Sunday.
USC is led by freshman guard Jazzy Davidson, who averages 16.9 points, 6.3 rebounds and 4.4 assists per game. Davidson was the No. 1 recruit in the country on SportsCenter’s 2025 NEXT 100, coming out of Clackamas, Oregon, as a five-star prospect and rated 98 out of 100.
While Davidson is USC’s headline star, senior guard Kara Dunn has stats comparable to the freshman, averaging 15.9 points and 5.4 rebounds per game. Dunn is the more efficient scorer, shooting 48.3% from the field compared to Davidson’s 39.3%.
Lindsay Gottlieb is the current head coach of USC women’s basketball, entering her fifth season. The Trojans made back-to-back runs to the Elite Eight in the 2024 and 2025 NCAA Tournaments, entering both tournaments as a No. 1 seed – a feat USC had not accomplished in nearly 40 years.
Junior guard JuJu Watkins, who is missing the entire 2025-26 season due to rehab from a torn ACL suffered in the second round of the 2025 NCAA Tournament, won the 2025 Naismith Women’s College Player of the Year award under Gottlieb’s tutelage. Without Watkins, USC fell to No. 2 seed University of Connecticut 78-64 in the Elite Eight.
Tipoff between Indiana and USC is at 10 p.m. Thursday at the Galen Center in Los Angeles. The match will also be available on the Big Ten Network.
Follow reporters Savannah Slone (@savrivers06 and srslone@iu.edu) and Max Schneider (maxschn@iu.edu) and columnist Sean McAvoy (@sean_mc07 and semcavoy@iu.edu) for updates throughout the Indiana women’s basketball season.
