General Gobrecht's charge.

Byline: Bob Rodman The Register-Guard

Last week, the University of Southern California added to its impressive sports trophy case by commemorating three national championships.

Women's basketball was not one of them.

The Women of Troy have not been to that winner's circle since 1984. And they have won just two Pac-10 Conference titles in the 18-year history of the league, the last a decade ago.

That lack of hardware helped bring Chris Gobrecht home.

"There clearly is an expectation to be successful at USC," said Gobrecht, reared in Southern California, schooled at USC and in her seventh season as the Trojans' women's basketball coach.

"The administration is supportive and realized what dire straits the program was in, but at USC you had better win at some point. It's 'SC. It's on a national stage. I can walk into a grocery store and no one will know me. But the expectation for USC doesn't change - win."

This season, the Trojans are doing that. They toppled Pac-10 power Stanford, 59-56, on Sunday, the third time USC has defeated the Cardinal in the past six meetings between the two teams.

And the Trojans begin the second half of the conference schedule - against Oregon State on Thursday and Oregon on Saturday - with a 7-2 record (10-7 overall), only one game behind front-running Stanford and Arizona. Combined, on USC's turf, the Trojans are 30-9 against the Beavers and Ducks.

Home or away, Gobrecht easily ranks as one of the most competitive coaches in the land, though her fiery ways appear to have mellowed some.

Maybe.

"I always had this reputation for being so tough," said Gobrecht, the former Washington coach whose intensity and rage along a sideline are legendary in the Pac-10. "But when I first got to USC, I don't think I was tough enough."

Lisa Love, a USC senior associate athletic director and senior women's administrator who oversees five sports, including women's basketball, said Gobrecht can still light up an official, though her days of parking her backside on the scorer's table amid a tirade - and en route to a technical foul - seem to be waning.

"Chris still has a very strong sideline presence," Love said. "I don't think she has necessarily backed off, but she certainly is more selective with her battles."

Gobrecht, soon to be 49, insists she has changed.

"I am a little more mellow now," she said. "I've gone through a lot of spiritual growth; a lot of things in my heart have changed. I try a lot harder to find out who the players are, what they want and to help them be the best they can be.

"I'm not so blind to think that one size fits all like I used to be."

After six-plus grinding, frustrating seasons at USC in which potential often went unfufilled, Gobrecht's game plan appears to be getting off the drawing board.

"I think Chris is feeling very positive right now," Love said. "I think this is becoming the opportunity to turn the program in the direction she so hard has tried to get it to go, and the direction the university wants it to go."

This season's USC team, which came close to defeating defending national champion Connecticut and is led by two-time all-Pac-10 player Ebony Hoffman, "is one I do not need to use the sledgehammer nearly as much," Gobrecht said.

"I was at my wit's end with some of those earlier teams, and it wasn't just basketball but classroom, study table, everything. It wore you out. In this day and age, just showing up and being talented is not going to get it done."

For 11 seasons as the Washington coach, Gobrecht led the Huskies to three conference titles (two in the Pac-10), nine NCAA Tournament appearances, eight 20-win seasons and 243 victories, the most by any coach in UW's 30-year history.

But it has been a bittersweet coaching run at her alma mater for Gobrecht, who was a three-year (1974-76) basketball starter for USC and also played two seasons of volleyball for the Trojans. Just twice has Gobrecht had winning seasons - 16-14 in 1999-2000 and again in 2001-02. No NCAA Tournament appearances. Two WNIT visits, both ending in the second round.

In 1998-99, her second year at USC, Gobrecht - twice a Pac-10 coach of the year while at Washington - suffered through a seven-win season. That kind of win drought had happened just twice before in her nearly 25 years as a head coach at Cal State-Fullerton, Washington, Florida State and USC.

"Washington was an incredible experience," said Gobrecht, who owns 420 career victories. "Those 11 seasons will be pretty hard to top. It was a wonderful time in my life. Seattle is where my children (Eric and Madeline) were born."

But nothing lasts forever, she said.

"I have no desire to go back to the person I was or the time in my life that Washington represented," she said. "I do not long for it or miss it."

Neither will she miss the struggling times in Los Angeles, once they move on.

"I made some mistakes early," Gobrecht said, "mistakes in how we went about rebuilding the program, mistakes in matching personnel with coaching style.

"There was some blindness on my part. I needed to realize that we had to have a team that would play hard, play together, and that we had to have people with different priorities than we had in the past.

"We had to change from having the superstar players who dominated because of talent - players like Lisa Leslie and Tina Thompson - to learning how to win with the things that winning is all about - be smart, work hard and play together.

"The superstar thing is a thing of the past, but before I got here (the USC program) was a mess."

The Trojans had four coaches - Marianne Stanley, Cheryl Miller, Fred Williams and Gobrecht - in five years.

"In that five-year period (mid-to-late 1990s), there was only one year where any recruiting was done," Gobrecht said. "In the other years, they would bring in one or two players, and they would be lucky if they were Division I players.

"Other teams were growing by leaps and bounds and USC was sitting stagnant, living on a legacy that was passing. The cupboard was bare."

Love said USC's fall from women's basketball grace was caused by a number of factors, including "bad timing, injuries and recruiting classes that just did not work out.

"When we hired Chris, the program was in need of resuscitation. There was a lot of glitter in the past but it was significantly in the past. Chris had quite a chore on her hands to re-establish the program."

Personnel has been one hurdle. There have been others, including facilities.

USC has two venues for its home games - the tiny Lyon Center on campus, which seats 1,200, and the aging Los Angeles Sports Arena, which seats 15,509 but never has held more than 8,641 for a USC women's basketball game, and that was in 1982.

If all goes as planned, the Galen Center - an $80 million, 10,000-seat arena adjacent to the USC campus - will be open for business in 2006.

Meanwhile, Gobrecht has the Trojans back in the business of winning.

THE GOBRECHT FILE

USC women's basketball coach Chris Gobrecht has 420 career victories in her 25 years as a head coach.

School Years Record Conf. titles Postseason

CS-Fullerton 1979-85 84-92 0 1 WNIT appearance

Washington 1985-96 243-89 3 9 NCAA appearances

Florida State 1996-97 5-22 0 None

USC 1997-present 88-102 0 2 WNIT appearances

Totals 25 years 420-305 3 12 appearances

CAPTION(S):

USC coach Chris Gobrecht spent 11 successful seasons at Washington before taking over in Los Angeles, where winning has proven more difficult than in Seattle.