The return of the USC Trojans as a top women’s basketball program in the country appears to have some serious staying power as coach Lindsay Gottlieb and the Trojans picked up another five-star recruit on Friday. Saniyah Hall, the No. 2 prospect in the Class of 2026 on the Top247 recruiting rankings, announced her decision to sign with USC going into her senior year.
“I would just say it felt like home,” Hall said during her announcement on ESPN. “All of my teammates, the girls there are just so fun to be around. Definitely Lindsay, just the coaches there, they have high support. But she’s definitely there to support me and I’ve built a relationship there and she’s a great coach.”
Hall, a 6-foot-2 forward, stars at SPIRE Academy in Ohio and recently led USA Basketball’s U19 squad to a World Cup gold medal — earning MVP honors in that tournament.
Now, she will make the move out to Los Angeles in 2026 to join a loaded Trojans roster that includes JuJu Watkins and Jazzy Davidson as fellow former five-star prospects on the Trojans roster. While next season will be a challenge to remain at the top without Watkins as she recovers from a torn ACL, the 2026-27 USC team figures to be one of the best in the country.
USC was one of the dominant women’s basketball programs throughout the 1980s and ’90s, with Cheryl Miller leading the Trojans to two (then WCAA) national titles in 1983 and 1984, and then Lisa Leslie continuing the legacy of great bigs in Southern California in the early ’90s. However, after Leslie’s departure in 1994, USC spent nearly three decades as an afterthought in women’s college basketball, making just five tournament appearances in 27 years before Lindsay Gottlieb took over.
Gottlieb has led the Trojans to three straight tournament appearances, including back-to-back Elite 8s as a 1-seed, and she’s started to bring stars back to the Galen Center. Keeping Watkins in L.A. made USC a destination again, and they’ve parlayed that into Davidson and now Hall, riding a wave of recruiting success that they hope can lead to snapping their national title drought soon.
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