Women’s Basketball: Virginia falls 65-48 at home to Southern California

Virginia suffered a 65-48 loss against Southern California on Sunday at John Paul Jones Arena.

The Trojans (2-0) opened the game on an 11-0 run, but the Cavaliers (0-2) came back to briefly take an 18-17 lead in the second quarter. The Trojans held a 34-30 advantage at halftime and outscored the Cavaliers 31-18 in the second half.

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Junior point guard Taylor Valladay led the Cavaliers with nine points. Sophomore guard Kaydan Lawson scored five points with a team-high nine rebounds. Rayah Marshall came off the bench to score 16 points with nine rebounds for the Trojans.

USC converted its first four field goal attempts of the game, jumping out to an 11-0 lead, but the Cavaliers put together a 6-0 run of their own to begin to chip away at the deficit. An and-one from Lawson with 6.9 seconds left in the first quarter got the Cavaliers to within one, 17-16. A layup from grad student forward Tihana Stojsavljevic 1:06 into the second quarter gave UVA its only lead of the game, 18-17. USC answered with a 7-0 run, with a three-pointer from the corner from grad student guard Amandine Toi ending the run. Another three pointer, this one from junior guard Carole Miller, made it a two-point game, 29-27, with just over three minutes left in the half. The Cavaliers went into the locker room trailing by four at the break.

A jumper from junior forward Camryn Taylor made it a one-point game, 36-35, with 7:47 remaining in the third, but the Trojans went on an 8-0 run to build up a 44-35 advantage. USC took advantage of a four-minute UVA scoring drought to build up a double-digit lead, a drought ended by a layup by Meg Jefferson with 1:26 left in the period.

Valladay scored UVA’s first six points of the fourth quarter, trading points with the Trojans, to keep it a nine-point game with 5:05 remaining, but the Cavaliers would go 0-of-7 from the field in the final five minutes as the Trojans built up to the 65-48 final tally.