USC women’s basketball head coach Lindsay Gottlieb has received a commitment from another No. 1 prospect, the third top recruit to pledge to her program in the past four cycles, according to ESPN.
Saniyah Hall, a 6-foot-2 Class of 2026 forward who now plays for SPIRE Academy in Ohio, announced her commitment to USC Friday on ESPN’s “NBA Today.”
“I would just say it felt like home,” Hall said following her official visit to USC. “I loved all of my teammates. The girls there are so fun to be around. The coaches … have high support, but [Gottlieb] is definitely there to just support me, and I’ve built a relationship with her — she’s a great coach.”
Last week, Hall helped Team USA win gold at the U19 Women’s World Cup. She earned tournament MVP honors after averaging 19.9 points, 6.4 rebounds, 2.0 assists and 2.9 steals per games while shooting 52.6% from the field and 39.3% from 3.
Hall has transferred back to her home state for her final season, but last year she played her junior season at Montverde Academy in Florida.
Hall picked USC over North Carolina and UCLA.
She’s following in the footsteps of Trojans guards JuJu Watkins and Jazzy Davidson, who were rated by ESPN as No. 1 prospects in the 2023 and 2025 recruiting classes, respectively, before committing to USC.
Although Watkins suffered a season-ending ACL tear in USC’s second-round NCAA tournament game against Mississippi State, she swept the major National Player of the Year awards this year as a sophomore.
Additionally, she collected first-team All-American honors for the second year in a row after averaging 23.9 points, 6.8 rebounds, 3.4 assists, 2.2 steals and 1.8 blocks per game.
USC, which has made back-to-back Elite 8s as a 1-seed, is adding Davidson to the fold for the 2025-26 season. She rounded out her Clackamas High School career as the 2024-25 Gatorade Oregon Girls Basketball Player of the Year, averaging 29.3 points, 8.7 rebounds, 3.3 steals, 2.6 assists and 1.9 blocks per game as a senior.
While the Trojans will have to wait for Watkins to fully recover, their 2026-27 roster is shaping up to be spectacular, perhaps fit to end the program’s four-plus-decade national title drought.