UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Kara Dunn had 24 points and Jazzy Davidson had 22, but Penn State rallied to defeat the USC women, 85-82 on Wednesday night.
The Trojans led 62-58, early in the fourth quarter and 70-68 with 5:35 to play before Kiyomi McMiller and Moriah Murray made key shots to give Penn State the lead.
Penn State extended its lead to 79-74 after a 15-foot jumper by McMiller. The teams exchanged buckets until Dunn hit a three-pointer with 14 seconds left, pulling the Trojans back within two at 82-80. McMiller was fouled immediately after the inbounds pass, and made both her free throws. Davidson scored on a layup to make it 84-82 with four seconds remaining. Vitoria Santana was fouled and made one of two free throws with three seconds remaining, but USC was unable to get a shot off after that.
Dunn made a season-high six three-pointers and had six rebounds and three assists. Davidson had her 25th consecutive double-figure scoring performance and sixth straight 20-point game. Kennedy Smith had 19 points along with six rebounds, four assists, two steals and a block.
With the loss, USC drops to 17-11 overall and 9-8 in Big Ten play. Wednesday was Penn State’s second win all-time and first win against USC since Jan. 6, 1980.
The Museum of Contemporary Art has acquired Kara Walker’s sculpture “Unmanned Drone,” a cornerstone of the museum’s groundbreaking “Monuments” exhibition.
It joins the 158 works by 106 artists that were added to MOCA’s permanent collection last year, including major works by Jacqueline Humphries, Mike Kelley, Shizu Saldamando, Mary Weatherford, Julie Mehretu and Nairy Baghramian. Fifty artists are new to the collection, including Jonathas de Andrade, Leilah Babirye, Meriem Bennani, Paul Chan, Cynthia Daignault and Ali Eyal.
“Unmanned Drone” — a towering testament to the power of transmogrification — commands a room of its own at the Brick, which co-presented the “Monuments” exhibition in October. Walker created the 13-foot-tall bronze sculpture out of a statue of the prominent Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson that was originally in Charlottesville, Va. The statue had been removed after serving as a significant gathering place for the infamous 2017 Unite the Right rally of white supremacists.
A detail of a severed arm — part of Kara Walker’s sculpture “Unmanned Drone,” which she created using a decommissioned statue of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson.
In an interview last fall, Brick director Hamza Walker explained to The Times that the city of Charlottesville issued a request for proposals from organizations interested in taking possession of the statue. The Brick applied and was deeded the statue, taking physical possession on Jan. 6, 2022. The gallery then gave the statue to Walker.
“They were getting rid of the Lee and the Stonewall Jackson statues, and they said, ‘We don’t want them put back up for further veneration,’” Hamza Walker said. “And so the idea of giving the statue to an artist fit that bill.”
Other applicants skipped over the line about not putting them up for further veneration, Hamza Walker said, noting that the Brick’s proposal was up against ones from Civil War battlefields and Laurel Hill, the birthplace of Confederate general J.E.B. Stuart.
A detail of the horse’s nostril in Kara Walker’s sculpture “Unmanned Drone,” which MOCA has acquired.
(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)
Kara Walker sliced apart the statue with a plasma cutter and welded it back together in an entirely new form. She did away with Jackson’s face and put much of the focus on his famous steed, Little Sorrel. The horse now stands upright with its head pushing out from the back of its saddle.
“She didn’t want you to be able to identify with him. She wanted the emphasis on Little Sorrel rather than the myth of the man,” Hamza Walker explained of Kara Walker’s intentions. “She wanted to reduce it to horse and rider.”
“The fiend has no head,” Knight commented in his review. “The folkloric Euro-American story of the ‘headless horseman’ comes to mind — a nightmarish, animated corpse who haunts the living. As a metaphor for obtuse white supremacy, still active today, that terror figure is hard to beat.”
Walker’s work was the only transformed statue out of the nearly dozen decommissioned statues related to the Confederacy featured in the “Monuments” exhibition. The others were all presented as they looked when they were removed, many during the protests that swelled in the summer of 2020 in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.
A detail of a sword on Kara Walker’s sculpture “Unmanned Drone.”
(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)
In addition to “Unmanned Drone,” MOCA announced several other acquisitions that were either featured in recent exhibitions or have significant connections to the museum. These include an environmental sculpture by Olafur Eliasson; work by Takako Yamaguchi; a media installation by Paul Pfeiffer titled “Red Green Blue” (2022), co-acquired with the Brooklyn Museum; and pieces by Cynthia Daignault, Shizu Saldamando and Henry Taylor.
“The expansion of MOCA’s collection this year reflects a sustained and deeply collaborative effort to think critically about what it means to build a museum collection in the twenty-first century,” Clara Kim, chief curator and director of curatorial affairs, said in a statement.
Kara Braxton, who won two WNBA championships during a 10-year career, has died at age 43.
“It is with profound sadness that we mourn the passing of 2x WNBA Champion Kara Braxton,” the WNBA said in a statement Sunday. “Our thoughts are with her family, friends, and former teammates at this time.”
No cause of death has been given.
Born in Jackson, Mich., along with twin sister Kim, Braxton played high school basketball at Jackson High for one season and at Westview High in Portland, Ore., for three seasons.
Braxton, a 6-foot-6 center-forward, played at the University of Georgia from 2001-2004, earning SEC freshman of the year and first-team all-conference honors in 2002. She averaged 15.4 points and 7.3 rebounds a game during her three seasons with the Bulldogs.
“Rest in peace Kara,” Georgia basketball posted on X.
Braxton was selected by the Detroit Shock at No. 7 overall in the 2005 draft. She spent 5 1/2 seasons with the team, winning the WNBA championship in 2006 and 2008 and earning her only All-Star nod in 2007. She also played for the Phoenix Mercury from 2010-11 and the New York Liberty from 2011-14, finishing with career averages of 7.6 points and 4.7 rebounds a game.
New York Liberty’s Kara Braxton grabs the ball between Indiana Fever’s Tammy Sutton-Brown, left, and Tamika Catchings on Sept. 17, 2011.
(Mel Evans / Associated Press)
“We mourn the loss of Kara Braxton, a former Liberty player whose presence and passion left a lasting impact on our organization and the women’s game,” the Liberty wrote Sunday on X. “Our hearts are with her family, friends, teammates, and all who were touched by her spirit. Her impact will not be forgotten.”
Braxton is survived by her husband Jarvis Jackson and two sons, Jelani Thurman and Jream Jackson.
Thurman, a tight end who played three seasons at Ohio State before transferring to North Carolina last month, posted a number of tributes to his mother on his Instagram Story, including a photo of her kissing him as a baby at a Shock media day photo shoot.
“imma miss my queen,” Thurman wrote to accompany another photo, which appears to show him as an older child wearing his mother’s No. 45 jersey to school.
Thurman also posted video of an interview from around the time Ohio State won the 2024 national championship in which he was asked what lessons he learned from his mother that helped get him to that point.
“Man, she taught me always go hard,” Thurman said. “There’s one goal, you know what you need to go to do.”
The USC women’s basketball team rolled to a 71-39 win over Rutgers on Sunday at Galen Center.
The Trojans (13-9, 5-6 Big Ten) got off to a slow start, ending the first quarter trailing by three points. Rutgers (9-13, 1-10) held the lead until the 5:39 mark in the second quarter when Kara Dunn hit a pair of free throws. USC picked up its defensive pressure in the second quarter, which helped ignite its offense. The Trojans held a six-point lead at halftime and extended it during a second-half surge.
Dunn led USC with 18 points and six rebounds. Jazzy Davidson contributed 16 points, nine rebounds and five assists, while Kennedy Smith added 11 points and four assists. Laura Williams anchored the glass with 11 rebounds and Malia Samuels finished with seven points and four rebounds.
Imani Lester scored 11 points and grabbed six rebounds for Rutgers. Zachara Perkins recorded 12 points and four rebounds and Faith Blackstone added six points.
USC outscored Rutgers 23-8 in the third quarter and kept the pressure up in the fourth, outscoring the Scarlet Knights 19-8. The Trojans dominated the battle on the boards, 57-32. USC made the most of Rutgers’ 20 turnovers, scoring 21 points off the miscues.
USC will look to extend its two-game win streak at Northwestern (8-14, 2-9) at 6 p.m. on Thursday. The game will air on the Big Ten Network.
