USC Women Surge Past UCLA, 87-74

The USC women’s basketball team buried UCLA with a late first-half blitz Saturday and ran away to an 87-74 victory, tightening its grip on second place in the Pacific 10 Conference race.

USC (11-3, 17-6) will try to maintain its position next week at Oregon and Oregon State. For UCLA (5-9, 11-12), the rout, before a turn-away crowd of 1,417 at Lyon Center, put a little more hurt in a long season.

The Trojans scored 41 points off turnovers--guard Kristin Clark had five steals--and forced UCLA into taking ill-advised shots. And USC was aided in large measure by an emerging defensive star, 6-foot-2 freshman Tiffany Washington from Lawndale.

Tina Thompson, the Pac-10 scoring leader at 22.5 points a game, sat out much of the first half after suffering a bruised kneecap in a center-court fall, but she still finished with 19 points and 14 rebounds in 28 minutes.

Coach Fred Williams’ team played perhaps its best basketball of the season, but only after UCLA had built an 18-10 lead.

Then Clark dished off to Kyoko Miller, who made a pull-up jumper to launch a 31-12 run.

Miller made another jumper, Thompson scored on a drive, Thompson fed Adrain Williams on a breakaway and Michelle Campbell got USC to within one, 21-20.

The Trojans closed out the half with a 23-6 salvo, and in the final 8:52 of the half UCLA scored one field goal.

Williams was delighted.

“We did a lot of good team things tonight--I’m happier about that than anything,” he said.

Maylana Martin, Aisha Veasley, Carly Funicello and Melanie Pearson each had 12 points for the Bruins.