LOS ANGELES — The first time Lindsay Gottlieb called, Beth Burns said no. Burns had lived several lifetimes in basketball already, a 30-plus-year coaching career with head-coaching runs at San Diego State and Ohio State. She was perfectly happy in simplicity, an associate strength and conditioning coach at Louisville.
But Gottlieb kept calling, and in 2022, Burns found herself packing up a moving van for Southern California – with one caveat. She was into her mid-60s. She wanted little to do with the nuts-and-bolts burdens of being an assistant coach at USC, preferring to be given the freedom to work extensively with individual players.
Two years later, Burns largely has taken ownership of an entire USC defense amid the program’s rise to national prominence.
She is old school on the surface, never one for mincing words while barking mid-practice orders on positioning. But Burns has made her mark, more deeply, by trying to make “defense more empirical” to players, as she told the Southern California News Group.
Offensive results are easy enough to understand: Go 9 of 10 from the floor, you had a great game. Go 1 of 10 from the floor, you had a bad game. Defensive results, typically, are more complex to quantify.
Not at USC. Not with Burns. In addition to the persisting concept of defensive “goal charts,” Burns’ defensive measurables largely rest on a concept called “kills” – which she defines as three total defensive stops in a row.
But how, exactly, does one teach kills in practice?
“You don’t get off the floor ‘till you get three stops in a row, and I’m never in a hurry to get anywhere,” Burns cracked. “So you figure out, real quick, you get a stop.”
It’s working, across every possible measure. Masked in the shadow of the Trojans’ upstart NCAA Tournament run last season was the fact that USC wasn’t particularly special defensively. They were a “survivalist” unit, as Burns put it. They ranked 96th in the country in opponent field-goal percentage (38.8%), and 182nd in opponent three-point percentage (30.8%).
“So, you’re like, ‘Well, how on Earth did they go to an Elite Eight?’” Burns said. “Well, we made shots, and we didn’t turn the ball over.”
USC is making more shots in 2024-25, thanks to continued offensive growth from JuJu Watkins and the contributions of all-world big Kiki Iriafen, in a 13-1 start (3-0 in the Big Ten). The Trojans have turned the ball over plenty, too, still ironing out the kinks. But they’ve taken a leap, as a program, with a truly elite defense.
Burns said USC’s nonconference average for kills this season is 10; getting three defensive stops in a row 10 times, she remarked, probably meant you’d win a basketball game. And the program’s defensive consistency, by traditional stats, has been remarkable: second in the nation in blocks per game, 11th in opponent field-goal percentage, 11th in opponent points-per-game.
It starts, as Burns described, with the two-headed force of senior center Rayah Marshall and freshman wing Kennedy Smith: Marshall (2.1 blocks a game) patrolling the paint and Smith (2.4 steals) at the point of attack. Senior Oregon State transfer guard Talia Von Oelhoffen is still struggling to find her rhythm offensively, but has offered switchable versatility with her size at 5-foot-11. And Watkins has taken a leap in her defensive IQ, Burns described, accepting more responsibility and averaging a combined 4.4 steals-plus-blocks a game.
“Last year, we didn’t try to put hardly anything on Ju’s plate, because she had everything on her plate, in terms of the newness,” Burns said. “And now, expectations are higher.”
Expectations are higher for every member of the roster, No. 4 USC having won nine in a row and trying to emerge with minimal blemishes from a brutal two-month Big Ten schedule. The Trojans passed their initial test with flying colors, holding Michigan to 33% shooting and Nebraska to 35% in two subsequent home wins.
And all in all, Burns said, this year’s USC team should be the best defensively of the three squads she’s coached in Southern California.
“We’re not where we need to be,” Burns said, “but we’re getting better.”
No. 4 USC at Rutgers
When: 5 p.m. Sunday
Where: Jersey Mike’s Arena, Piscataway, N.J.
TV: Big Ten Network
No. 4 USC at Maryland
When: 5:30 p.m. Wednesday
Where: XFINITY Center, College Park, Md.
TV: FS1