Spring football continues to be the biggest unrelated-to-rooftops story at USC this semester, and we at Campus Basement are starting a new feature: figuring out what other USC “sports teams” think about our football team. This week: women’s basketball!
We asked senior guard Jackie Gemelos her thoughts on the football team’s chances at winning the BCS championship next year: “I mean…pretty good, though if it’s championships you want, I mean, we’re in the NIT championship game. It’s in two days. We just won our last five games by at least 13 points. This is the best showing for USC basketball in years.”
Moving on, we asked sixth woman standout Ashley Corral her thoughts on Coach Lane Kiffin: “Uh, I mean, he’s great I guess…if I had to pick a coach though, I’d go with our women’s basketball coach, Michael Cooper…you know, the one with three NBA championship rings…the defensive stopper on Magic Johnson’s Laker teams…[sigh] the one who has really awkward sexual tension with Lisa Leslie on the Lakers postgame show.”
For a final question, we asked sophomore Christina Marinacci her thoughts on Matt Barkley–on a scale of 1 to Matt Barkley, how hot is he? Her response: “Uh…Matt Barkley I guess. Seriously, though, people should really be paying attention to USC women’s basketball. We’re about to bring the university a championship trophy, we’re playing at an extremely high level, and we have a number of really impressive WNBA prospects on our team.”
She then amended her statement: “okay, I realize that how that last part sounds now. Forget the WNBA thing. But still, support your women’s basketball team. We had like 5 fans at the last game.”
We asked recent women’s basketball alum Camille LeNoir if life was ever more difficult for women’s basketball players because they weren’t male football players. “The knee-jerk response is to say no, that we’re proud of who we are and what we’ve done, especially because we actually have a postseason and we are capable of winning in Oregon. But the truth is, it’s really nice to have the support of a stadium full of fans for the first two quarters.
“If I could do it all again? Yeah, I think I’d be a male football player.”
Stay tuned for next week when we get the opinions of athletes from another sport that doesn’t include tackling, dunking, or a supportive student body.
