Beth Burns swung her whistle in circles, around and around, as she observed practice Wednesday afternoon.
JuJu Watkins burst down the court during a timed conditioning drill with layups and jump shots coinciding at each end. Rayah Marshall attacked the rim before hustling to the back of the player’s line. Kayleigh Heckel used her swift speed to run quicker than her teammates to corral a loose ball before depositing a shot into the net.
Somehow, with all the action laid out in front of her, this was Burns’ quiet time: offensive drills.
The 67-year-old associate head coach has seen it all in college basketball. She worked her way up from her college career at Ohio Wesleyan, to becoming a head coach at San Diego State and Ohio State and back to the Aztecs again. But the most recent step of Burns’ legacy — her coaching journey — might lie with the defensive success of No. 3 USC (16-1, 6-0 Big Ten).
Burns doesn’t go out on the recruiting trail, she said. Head coach Lindsay Gottlieb trusts Burns to attack practice head-on to teach, develop and ingrain defensive principles when players arrive at University Park. Leave the offense up to Gottlieb. And on defense, let Burns get to work. It’s paid off more than ever in the 2024-25 season.
“The people that I work for, some of the mentors that I have, were very defensive-oriented,” Burns said. “If I was a football player, I’d be a rush lineman. That’s just the way I roll.”
The Trojans are nationally ranked second in blocked shots per game (7.3), ninth in opponent’s field goal percentage (34.1%), 12th in scoring defense (54.5 points allowed per game) and tied for 22nd in steals per game (11.9) — all of which leads to USC’s third-ranked scoring margin of 30.2 points per game.
How did the Trojans leap from playing middling defense a year ago to a lockdown defensive squad that rivals the best in the nation? Burns is turning her players into the team’s self-defined defensive moniker: “Mad Dogs.”
“When we’re a mad dog, we come to break you,” Marshall said. “We want to mentally break teams.”
The 6-foot-4 center transforms into a new version of herself when her sneakers hit the Galen Center’s hardwood. Marshall is willing to “run through a wall,” putting her body on the line to bolster defensive stands.
Against Michigan, the Lynwood High alumnus helped lead a press that forced the Wolverines into uncomfortable shots and 23 turnovers. A few days later, she caused Nebraska star Alexis Markowski to shoot three for 11 from the field. USC held both Big Ten squads to below 60 points, and have held 11 teams below that mark this season.
“If you’re a mad dog, you’re a mad dog,” Gottlieb said after defeating Michigan on Dec. 29. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a center or guard.”
Marshall’s effort on defense is rubbing off on her freshmen counterparts. Burns pointed to Avery Howell, Kennedy Smith and Heckel as the defensive catalysts — or mad dogs — for USC’s victory over Maryland on Jan. 8.
But what makes a mad dog?
Read more: No. 4 USC dominates Penn State in game that holds deeper significance for Trojans
Burns said not every idea is original.
“I stole it. Everything that coaches do, they usually steal,” Burns said.
In her stint as associate strength and conditioning coach at Louisville before returning to Southern California for her second run at USC, Cardinals head coach Jeff Walz used a press similar to the one Burns is implementing now.
“I said, ‘coach [Walz], tell me the rules,’” Burns said. “Because I just — I love this stuff.”
‘“I put (two-time gold medalist) Angel McCoughtry at the point and she’s nuts, and whatever else we do, I’m not really sure,’” Burns recalled Walz explaining to her. “If you can get a gifted player at the point of the ball, and everybody else then has rules and roles.”
When Burns arrived at USC in 2022, during Marshall’s sophomore season, she identified the developing post player as aa potential mad dog, a defined impact player who could lead the point of attack on defense.
Burns said she always liked matching taller players against shorter players and the inverse, mucking up the opposing team’s vision on the court to force turnovers. Marshall fit that role. It was up to Marshall to take that next step, emerge as a defensive leader, build lateral and vertical quickness, and embody the mad dog that Burns said she could.
“I had to convince Rayah,” Burns said of Marshall, who averages 2.2 blocks and 1.2 steals per game. “Mad dogs work. … Rayah has not only embraced it, she excels at it. She understands it. She doesn’t do the same thing twice. She picks balls out of the air. I don’t think people want anything to do with her. It’s helped her on her path to the pros, because she’s showing her athleticism and her IQ and her versatility.”
In Marshall’s first season with Burns as her defensive coach, she earned All-Pac-12 Defensive Team honors, was named a Naismith Defensive Player of the Year semifinalist and broke Lisa Leslie’s single-season blocked shots record with 98.
Two years later, in likely her final season in cardinal and gold, Marshall is the first to tell anyone that the credit goes to Burns for her success — her coach who takes the time to pull her aside before or after practice to watch film or to give her notes on how to get better.
“All those flowers I’m saying are going to Coach B,” Marshall said. “I feel like watching film is something that I’ve never could even could imagine for basketball. So just the knowledge she shares on me, on my side as well, I’m just overly appreciative of. Having her is a blessing for me.”
Burns sends Marshall internet memes about hydration on off days, the senior said, making her laugh but also focused on the prize as the Big Ten season moves onward and the long trips continue.
“Anybody that knows Coach B loves her,” Marshall said. “How she is on the court is two different personalities of how she is off the court. You’re going to be pushed, you’re going to be challenged, you’re going to be also motivated. You’re going to be hungry.”
USC has all but wrapped up another NCAA tournament berth. The Trojans have yet to lose in Big Ten action and with Watkins at the helm of the offense and Marshall leading the mad dogs on defense, an NCAA title does not appear impossible.
For Burns, however, the thrill she gets from coaching might already be national championship level if you ask players like Marshall.
Now, it’s up to the mad dogs — including six players averaging more than a steal per game — to close the deal and raise a banner.
“I’ve been teaching for over 40 years,” Burns said. “If I didn’t love to do it, and if I wasn’t effective at doing it, I sure as heck wouldn’t be doing it. I love teaching. They give me joy and energy. They give me gray hair. These kids are good kids that want to be good.”
Get the best, most interesting and strangest stories of the day from the L.A. sports scene and beyond from our newsletter The Sports Report.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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