WBB Round-Up: Aggies Fall At USC, Host Idaho State

After an opening stretch that pitted Utah State against Division II competition and future WNBA superstars in the same week, the Aggies are ready to start the rest of their season, beginning with a home game against Idaho State on Wednesday.

The Aggies aren’t out of the woods yet and have plenty of steep competition left on the schedule. They'll be back on the road to face Big 12 squads BYU and TCU, with another one in Utah shortly after, but rosters like USC's are few and far between. The Trojans came into the season as the third-ranked team in the nation and didn't budge after their 3-0 start that included a romp over Utah State.

JuJu Watkins is expected to be the top overall pick in the 2027 WNBA draft, and if she is, she'll be the first top pick Utah State has played against since Sabrina Ionescu and the Oregon Ducks (the Aggies faced Ionescu twice, in 2018 and 2019, before she was selected in the 2020 draft). Eligibility rules will keep her in a Trojan uniform for a couple more seasons, but Jazzy Davidson is positioned as a top prospect for the 2029 WNBA draft as well.

Watkins missed the entirety of last year with an ACL injury, and if her performance against Utah State is any indication, her game hasn’t missed a beat. Watkins recorded 32 points, a career-high 16 rebounds, six assists and five steals, leading USC to a 118-40 victory in her first game at the Galen Center since the 2024-25 campaign.

Sharing a homecoming with Watkins, Aaliyah Gayles played at the Galen Center for her first time since transferring from USC and was welcomed back as family. In her postgame press conference, coach Lindsay Gottlieb, unprompted, said of Gayles, "I think all of you know how meaningful she is to me and this program. She's family, so I was glad she got a chance to play out here."

Gayles has been touch and go this year. Her status toggled between available and not throughout the preseason, she missed the team's opener and was on a minutes restriction in her debut against LMU. Whether it's physical, mental, or both, Gayles seemed to brush away some cobwebs and play more freely than she had before. She still has another step to take to get back to full form, but she was much more recognizable as AG against USC than she was against LMU. 

Gayles played 33 minutes and recorded six points, a rebound, two assists and a steal. She only had two turnovers spread out over her 33 minutes, a vast improvement from her six turnovers in seven minutes against LMU.

It would be easy to write off Utah State’s 78-point loss as a wash, but the Aggies also saw signs from another starter. Against the country’s third-ranked team doesn’t seem like the opportune moment to match your entire season's three-point production, but that’s exactly what Kylani Rookstool did. Rookstool scored 12 points, the best outing of her young DI career so far, along with a rebound and a steal. She was a coin flip from the field, knocking down 5 of 10 attempts, including a 2 of 4 clip from deep after hitting just two triples in her first two games of action. She is now shooting 33.3 percent from deep on the season, up from a 25 percent start across her first two games.

After her impressive debut, Nicole Ogun has been declining. She followed her 19-point game with eight, then six against USC. She's seen a similar decline in boards, falling from 11 to eight to four. She'll have an opportunity to get back on track against Idaho State, and will give the Aggies a much better chance against the Bengals if she does.

Idaho State was picked to finish seventh in the Big Sky media poll and sixth in the coaches poll. The Bengals lead the all-time series 18-16 and won the most recent matchup, 85-61, in Pocatello during the 2020-21 season. After a six-game Bengal win streak, the teams alternated victories, going 3-3 in the last six meetings with each team protecting its home floor. The last time the Aggies lost to Idaho State in Logan was on Dec. 11, 2010.

Both teams have played Westminster this season, and the Bengals have the advantage. With a 79-30 win, Idaho State scored more and held the Griffins to fewer points than Utah State, earning a 49-point advantage compared to Utah State's 16-point victory.

Idaho State is led by an impressive guard duo, Aspen Caldwell and Clare Valentine, with Maggie Hutka helping out in the post. All three are averaging double digits, and combined, they account for 35.1 of the team's 64.3 points and 18.7 of the team's 39.7 rebounds per game.

Caldwell is in her second year at Idaho State after starting her career at Idaho for a year, then UVU for a year. The Idaho Falls native is scoring a team-high 12.7 points per game, despite a five-point performance against BYU, and adds four rebounds and two assists per outing.

Valentine, the 6-0 freshman from San Diego, is averaging 11.7 points, 6.7 rebounds, an assist and a block per game. She had two steals against Westminster. She leads the team in three-point hits and shoots 44.4 percent from the field, and 27.8 percent from deep.

Hutka, another six-footer, is third on the team in scoring and first in rebounds. She averages 10.7 points, 8.0 rebounds, 1.3 steals and 1.3 blocks per game, and she shoots 53.6 percent from the floor.

The Westminster game is a fitting reference points as the Aggies prepare to take on the Bengals, because the Aggies really need to do the same thing now that they did as they opened the season. The newly minted Pac-12 program simply needs a win on its home floor. It doesn’t need to be by 49 points like Idaho State’s over Westminster. It doesn’t even need to be by 16 points, like Utah State’s own win over Westminster. A drama-free, dominant win would be preferred to any other kind of win, but a win at all would be far preferred to the alternative.