Swanson: Aaliyah Gayles’ iconic contribution to USC’s first-round victory
LOS ANGELES — Things that were iconic Saturday at Galen Center:
JuJu’s bun.
USC’s fight song, “Fight On.”
And Aaliyah freakin’ Gayles.
Real ones in the USC women’s basketball team’s growing and devoted fan base know.
“I don’t feel like no one else is doing this,” said Gayles, who played her first NCAA Tournament minutes, coming on with 5:23 to go and scoring a nifty bucket – to rousing cheers – in the No. 1 Trojans’ 71-25 victory over No. 16 UNC Greensboro in the first round NCAA Tournament.
“Just being able to overcome adversity and being able to take that next step, I feel like it’s great,” she said. “I feel like I’m a superhero in people’s eyes.”
A real-life superhero, this young woman.
That’s because when Gayles was 18 years old, she was shot nine times. Or maybe 10. So many times doctors had trouble determining the exact number, though – as ESPN reported – they counted 18 holes where bullets pierced her arms and legs, shattering bones and bursting a blood vessel and leaving the promising basketball star unable to walk or grip a pencil or even brush her own teeth.
She was among the top prospects in her class of 2022, right up there on ESPN’s HoopGurlz Recruiting Rankings with UCLA’s Lauren Betts, Kiki Rice and Janiah Barker. Gayles was a McDonald’s All-American and USC commit who averaged 13.8 points, 4.9 rebounds, 3.5 steals and 3.3 assists to lead Las Vegas’ Spring Valley High School to the Class 5A state tournament.
On April 16, 2022, a night after she played in the Jordan Brand Classic, Gayles went to a party where an unknown assailant opened fire, hitting Gayles and three others. She was lucky to survive. And she was, doctors said, unlikely to play ball again.
In the days after the shooting, Sparks Dearica Hamby and Kelsey Plum – then members of the Las Vegas Aces – donated and promoted a fundraiser to assist the 5-foot-9 guard: “We’re here for her,” Hamby said.
And Lindsay Gottlieb – then USC’s coach for less than a year – offered this: “Aaliyah is one of the strongest, most resilient young people I have ever known.”
Gottlieb got that right.
Gayles spent painstaking months rehabbing and rekindling her hoop dreams until she was cleared to play again ahead of last season, making her college debut on Nov. 10, 2023, in a non-conference game against Florida Gulf Coast.
And then last summer in the Drew League, Gayles – who’s originally from Compton – earned championship MVP honors after scoring 14 points to lead her squad, GAGE, to a 50-46 victory.
And now, as a redshirt sophomore on this season’s star-studded Trojans team, she’s the player sharpening her and her teammates’ games behind the scenes, regularly cast as the opponent’s best player or lead guard on the scout team – a role she said she relishes.
“I take that personal,” Gayles, 21, said. “My job is to push them, talk (trash) to them and get them fired up so when they do come to … bigger games, they already know that feeling, ‘cause they got me on the court.”
And there’s obviously no challenge she’s backing down from – including taking on sophomore sensation JuJu Watkins: “I tell her every time, ‘You can’t guard me!’ ‘I’m locking this up!’ ‘I’m forcing you left!’ All that.”
“She’s a critical part of our team,” Gottlieb said Saturday, after Gayles logged five productive minutes as USC’s lead guard, running the offense, making one of her two shots and grabbing a rebound.
“I always talk to her about every step in her journey is not the last one, it’s just another one. So to see her in good health and wearing a USC jersey playing an NCAA Tournament game for our team, it’s really significant on so many levels.
“And it’s not the end of her story by any means, but it’s always good to recognize a step and say how cool it is of a point we’re at right now.”
Gayles’ very important role on this team that’s now 29-3 and marching forward in pursuit of a national championship – “a natty,” she called it – is significant and so, so cool and it does feel, well, “iconic,” to use her word.
“Many, many steps that I did have to overcome, ’cause of what I went through,” Gayles said. “(Gottlieb) told me, ‘Take it step by step, brick by brick, day by day.’ … and all the hard work, the first steps I took, the crying, ‘Oh I can’t do this’ – all that, it’s crazy, just being able to say I did it and to keep going, too.
“It is worth it, for sure.”