Rayah Marshall and Kaitlyn Davis are playing their best for USC women’s basketball

For most of the season, USC women’s basketball has been carried by its starting backcourt of JuJu Watkins, McKenzie Forbes, and Kayla Padilla. While those three players all played important roles in helping USC beat Arizona on Thursday in Tucson, the frontcourt tandem of Rayah Marshall and Kaitlyn Davis carried most of the workload for the Trojans.

Marshall and Davis both posted season-high point totals to pick up the slack on a night when their backcourt teammates weren’t shooting well from 3-point range. It’s true that USC tied this game late in regulation on a 3-pointer, and then broke a tie in the second overtime with a 3-pointer, but it was the gruntwork of Davis and Marshall which put USC in position to make those key shots.

Let’s go into greater detail about Marshall and Davis, the frontcourt which is stepping up at just the right time this season:

MARSHALL WITH A SEASON-HIGH 26 POINTS

Marshall took advantage of Arizona’s lack of depth and size, scoring from start to finish in this double-overtime thriller. She scored seven points in the first quarter and put USC ahead late in the first overtime before Arizona sent the game into a second overtime period. She was an anchor of stability for a USC team which frankly didn’t play that well, bothered by Arizona’s energy and defense.

DAVIS: SEASON-HIGH 16 POINTS

USC needed every last one of Davis’ season-high 16 points to send the game to overtime and then win in double OT.

KAITLYN DAVIS: TIRELESS EFFORT ON THE GLASS

Kaitlyn Davis grabbed two rebounds in the final 16 seconds of regulation and cashed them into USC’s tying 3-pointer from Kayla Padilla. Arizona lost that five-point lead not by missing free throws, but by failing to get loose balls. Davis got them and saved this game for the Trojans in the process.

THE BIG BOARDS AND THE BIG SHOT

Padilla hits the big shot, but Davis’s rebounding makes it all possible.

JUJU STRUGGLES BUT THE FRONTCOURT PICKS HER UP

JuJu Watkins fought through a difficult, foul-plagued game, scoring just 20 points on 7-of-19 shooting and uncharacteristically missing three free throws in just seven attempts. Yet, USC picked up JuJu this time, learning from the Colorado game on January 21 in which the Trojans couldn’t overcome a fourth-quarter foul-out from Watkins. Davis and Marshall led the charge, with Padilla and McKenzie Forbes playing important supporting roles.

THE DREAM

We have seen games — many of them in January — in which the backcourt did most of the heavy lifting. This past week, the frontcourt is doing the work. The dream for this USC team is to have all five players playing well at the same time. There’s no better month for that to happen than March.

Story originally appeared on Trojans Wire