USC women's basketball began a much-anticipated season with a blowout win over UNLV on Monday. The Trojans are a young team with multiple first-year players on their roster. They will play teams much better than UNLV in the coming weeks and will be tested to a much more severe extent. There will be bumps in the road. However, the season opener in Las Vegas showed what kind of team this group can ultimately become. Saniyah Hall and Sitaya Fagan stood out from the crowd against UNLV.

Not all of USC's newcomers looked fully ready for this season opener. Sara Okeke struggled. Pania Davis seemed a half-step slow at times. However, Hall - the No. 1 recruit in the Class of 2026 - and Fagan, the Australian sensation, both looked like polished players who can very consistently help the veteran core of JuJu Watkins, Jazzy Davidson, and Kennedy Smith.

How good were Saniyah Hall and Sitaya Fagan as a tag-team combination versus Vegas? The two played a combined 40 minutes - 23 for Hall, 17 for Fagan. In those 40 minutes, Hall and Fagan produced 33 points on 12 of 16 shooting. You can do the quick math there and see that the Hall-Fagan combo shot 75 percent from the field. They produced more assists than turnovers (4-3) and blocked 3 shots. Hall added 7 rebounds.

Let's emphasize the point that neither player played extended minutes, and yet they both made massive contributions in relatively limited time. Lindsay Gottlieb and the USC staff were able to rotate a lot of players in and out of the lineup. USC was able to get a look at a lot of different players and lineup combinations. Imagine what will happen if Hall and Fagan get more minutes. Their numbers will only go up if they get more time. The blowout against UNLV afforded Gottlieb the chance to (necessarily and smartly) distribute minutes throughout the roster. We should expect that against better opponents such as South Carolina, Notre Dame, Duke, and then of course the Big Ten schedule, Saniyah Hall and Sitaya Fagan will indeed get more minutes.

Right now, it's important for everyone to get their feet wet so that the coaching staff can evaluate the full roster as much as possible. When the games become more important, Saniyah Hall and Sitaya Fagan should get more time on the court. Given how great they looked in Game 1, with Hall splashing 3-pointers and Fagan making very crisp cuts off the ball to put herself in position to score, USC knows it will have a lot of high-end options at the offensive end of the floor.