USC
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USC Women, Behind Aliyah Mazyck's 26 Points, Beats UCLA at Pauley 72-67
January 20, 2019 | Women's Basketball, Features
The victory gave USC (11-6, 1-5) its first Pac-12 win of the season after dropping the first 5 games of conference play. It also avenged last month's 72-65 UCLA win at the Galen Center when the Bruins (9-9, 2-4) overcame at 11-point halftime deficit.
"I'm very proud of our players," said USC head coach Mark Trakh. "UCLA is a good team. We worked hard for 40 minutes and made some big shots. If we play like this the rest of the way, we'll be very competitive."
The Trojans never trailed in this game, opening up a 19-12 first period lead and holding a 32-30 edge at halftime. After UCLA tied it at 32-32 right after the half, USC built an 11-point edge at 51-40 late in the third period. But the Bruins chipped away and closed to within 2 points several times late in the game, including 65-63 with 26 seconds to play, before Mazyck was fouled while hitting a layup with 23 seconds to go and added a free throw to give USC a cushion that UCLA couldn't overcome.
Both teams were fairly even statistically, as USC shot 42.4% from the field to UCLA's 42.3%. UCLA had a slight rebounding edge (38 to 33), but turned the ball over 17 times to USC's 13.
Minyon Moore added 12 points, a team-best 10 rebounds and 6 assists for USC, while Asiah Jones had 10 points on 5-of-6 shooting from the floor along with 5 boards, Ja'Tavia Tapley had 9 points, Mariya Moore scored 8 points and Kayla Overbeck had 7 points.
"This was my last USC-UCLA game," said Mazyck. "Our pride was on the line. It's hard to be positive when you've been losing, but we stayed positive today and got positive results.
"It feels great to win, just to win a game in conference. I hope it starts up some more wins for us."
Added Minyon Moore: "We put an emphasis to play the whole game like the score was 0-0. When we had our big lead in the second half, we knew they'd make a run but we stuck together."
Michaela Onyenwere led UCLA with 22 points and 12 rebounds, Lindsey Corsaro had 15 points while hitting all 3 of her 3-point attempts, Kennedy Burke had 14 points and 7 rebounds, Lajahna Drummer had 6 points and 10 rebounds and Japreece Dean had 8 assists.
"Give credit to USC, they played very hard," said UCLA head coach Cori Close. "They made it hard for us to get clean touches. They executed their game plan very well."
