USC Gives Old Dominion a Run : Top-Ranked Lady Monarchs Rally to 52-48 Victory

The 4,628 fans at the Old Dominion University Field House for Friday night’s game against USC must have been surprised at halftime.

The top-ranked Lady Monarchs, who had lost a mere three games at home in the past eight years, were trailing the Trojans by 11 points.

But the second half was a return to normalcy. Old Dominion applied a tough half-court trap, and USC wilted under the pressure.

The Lady Monarchs took advantage of some Trojan turnovers to score 10 straight points midway through the second half, and they came back to claim a 52-48 victory.

The game had its thrills and two big spills. Old Dominion’s All-American forward, Medina Dixon, went down in the first half after her face became the recipient of a Cheryl Miller elbow.

Dixon tore cartilage in her nose, which bled profusely for several minutes, and she was forced to sit out five minutes of the first half.

She had only four points at halftime, but played a major role in the Lady Monarchs’ comeback and finished with a team-high 14 points.

Miller had to leave the game with a slightly sprained knee with 7:21 left in the game. She was injured after barging through two defenders to score and cut Old Dominion’s lead to 45-42. She landed awkwardly after the shot.

She returned with 1:56 left but could not ignite a Trojan rally. Miller shared game-high scoring honors with freshman forward Holly Ford at 18 points.

Miller, USC’s leading scorer and rebounder, went out at a critical time, but the Trojans’ lead had crumbled long before her injury.

The Lady Monarchs, 14-0 this season, improved their home record under Coach Marianne Stanley since 1977 to 111-3.

No. 111 didn’t come easily.

After losing the first two games on this road trip to Georgia and Tennessee by a combined 32 points, the Trojans felt they had something to prove Friday night.

The two-time, defending NCAA champions wanted to show the country that they were still a good team--that there was more to USC than Cheryl Miller and they could win without the McGee twins. And they wanted to win on the road.

The Trojans did all of those things for the first 20 minutes, in which they totally outplayed the favored Lady Monarchs.

Ford made seven of nine first-half shots, many of them long-range jumpers, and scored 14 points, while Miller added 10 points to give USC a 30-19 halftime lead.

And the determined Trojans (10-3) were putting out their best defensive effort of the season, harassing Old Dominion into a poor-shooting half. The Lady Monarchs made 7 of 25 shots for 28%.

But Old Dominion looked much more like the nation’s best team in the second half, when it got the ball inside for some high-percentage shots and made 15 of 29 attempts from the floor (51%).

It was the defense that set up the offense. After center Dawn Cullen and forward Tracy Claxton each scored to cut USC’s lead to nine points at 34-23 with 18 minutes left, Stanley decided to switch to a 1-3-1 trap instead of continuing with a triangle-and-two. USC couldn’t handle it.

The move changed the entire tempo of the game. The Trojans were unable to run any patterned offenses, and their shot selection, which was excellent in the first half, rapidly declined.

Old Dominion reeled off six straight points, four of them on inside baskets by Dixon, to cut the lead to 38-33. On its next possession, USC couldn’t get a shot off in 30 seconds, and the Lady Monarchs capitalized with a Tracy Claxton basket to cut it to three, 38-35.

After the ball went off Miller’s fingertips and out of bounds on a drive to the basket, Cullen hit a jump shot to make it a one-point game until Miller finally scored to end USC’s four-minute scoring drought.

But the Lady Monarchs went on another spree, this one good for eight points, to take the lead. USC had only four turnovers in the first half but by game’s end, that figure increased to 16.

“They were so big up front with the trap that we couldn’t get our offense going,” said USC’s 5-5 point guard, Rhonda Windham. “And the crowd was also getting into the game. I was yelling at the top of my lungs, but no one could hear me.”

USC fell behind by seven points with four minutes to go but almost staged a comeback of its own. Amy Alkek made a jump shot and, after Old Dominion’s Lisa Blais made one of two free throws, Ford scored from inside to cut it to four, 52-48.

Claxton missed a foul shot in the bonus situation, and the Trojans had the ball and a chance to cut it to two, but Tracy Longo’s shot inside the key was blocked by Cullen. USC’s final possession with 10 seconds left ended when Miller’s pass went off Longo’s hands.