USC Women's Basketball: How Trojans Benefitted From Bizarre College Rule

Maren Angus-Coombs | Apr 18, 2024

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Southern California women's basketball coach Lindsay Gottlieb joked after the Trojans made the Sweet 16 that an Ivy League rule was "the best rule in the history of rules."

The Ivy League's rules prohibit graduate students from participating in athletics. Despite the conference granting one-time waivers whose senior year was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the rule didn't carry over to future classes which included three of USC's five starters.

Kayla Padilla (Penn), McKenzie Forbes (Harvard), and Kaitlyn Davis (Columbia) exhausted their eligibility at their Ivy League institutions granting them an opportunity to play one more year elsewhere. All three chose USC.

Gottlieb understands why the rule is in place, she played at Brown.

"That's an Ivy League principle," she said Friday, a day before the top-seeded Trojans face Baylor in the regional 3 semifinals in Portland. "That league, obviously, maintains a different kind of philosophical barometer than anyone else.

"That's great for that league. Certainly, these players have shown with an extra year, they have their Harvard degrees, Columbia degrees, Penn degrees. Now they have a year to experience something different."

Gottlieb's Ivy background probably helped her when she was recruiting the three players.

"I could speak Ivy with them in these conversations and experiences," she said. "I also watched a lot of games, as a fan. I knew what these players could do. We didn't go to the portal and say we only want Ivy League players. We want players that can complement where we want to go.

"These skill sets they had were really useful. I saw they could do it at a high level no matter where they were playing before. I knew it really translated to the next level. They've shown that, obviously, in real-time."

After experiencing what kind of opportunity the rules gave to those who want to extend their career, Gottlieb says it makes a good story.

"It is a cool story of what college basketball can be when players get the opportunity to experience everything," said Gottlieb. "For us, it has worked out well."