They sat in a line of folding chairs on the Galen Center court, watching the television in front of them intently, waiting as one region after another was announced without them. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the Trojans deserved a No. 1 seed — that box had already been checked through a 29-win regular season and Big Ten regular season title run. But as one top seed was declared, then another, then another, a different feeling crept over the group than the joy that filled the room this time last year.
USC once again earned a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament, this time in Regional Two that runs through Spokane in the Sweet 16 round. The Trojans will host No. 16 seed UNC Greensboro at Galen Center in the first round of the NCAA tournament at noon on Saturday. The game will air on ABC. None of that came as a surprise to anyone on Sunday.
A crowd filled with family, friends and season-ticket holders still burst into pandemonium when the Trojans heard their name called, gleefully celebrating the second time since 1986 that USC had earned a top tournament seed. The band played. The cheerleaders danced. But in the front row of the Trojans’ watch party, where the starters sat, word of a second straight top seed was met with a much more muted reaction than you might expect.
JuJu Watkins, the star sophomore, stared blankly ahead, offering only a slow, deliberate clap. Rayah Marshall sat stone-faced. Kiki Iriafen posed for the cameras, wearing only a thin smile. Meanwhile, their coach sat a few rows behind fuming, wondering how exactly the committee could place her team where it ultimately ended up.
“I never thought I’d be a one seed and feel disrespected,” USC coach Lindsay Gottlieb said, “but I thought the committee, I thought there would be very little chance that we’d be the No. 4 overall No. 1.”
A year ago, Gottlieb was just doing her best to calm the butterflies swirling in her stomach at the thought of the Trojans’ season culminating in a top seed. Now the coach was filled with frustration, baffled at how exactly the Trojans had fallen behind not just UCLA and South Carolina, but also Texas, a team most felt belonged in that fourth spot.
“This was not on my bingo card to be a little bit, you know, frustrated after being a one seed,” Gottlieb said. “And it’s not an arrogance of any kind. I think there’s a lot of really good teams, and you’ve got to play the first game in front of you and earn your way from there, but sometimes I don’t understand the people who make decisions in women’s basketball and why they do what they do. And certainly with this committee, I would love to ask some questions.”
The most pertinent of those questions being how USC could twice beat the No. 1 overall seed — UCLA — and lose just three games all season and still finish behind Texas in the seeding, despite the fact that the Longhorns twice lost to South Carolina, a team that was blown out by the Bruins?
USC guard JuJu Watkins hands a sword to coach Lindsay Gottlieb after the Trojans beat rival UCLA on Feb. 13 at the Galen Center.
(Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)
“I’m not normally this agitated,” Gottlieb said. “I like things that make sense. I don’t like being disrespected. I think we scheduled UConn and scheduled Notre Dame this year, for a reason. … It doesn’t make sense to me.”
Now, as the fourth overall seed, USC will presumably have to face UConn again in the Elite Eight, the exact fashion in which its tournament run ended last March. And the Huskies aren’t the only dangerous team in a region that Gottlieb called “loaded.”
Oklahoma, the region’s No. 3 seed, won nine in a row before falling to South Carolina in the Southeastern Conference tournament. Kentucky, the No. 4 seed, opened this season 16-1. The No. 6 seed, Iowa, already dealt USC a defeat back in February, while the No. 8 seed, California, was previously led by Gottlieb from 2011 to 2019.
“If there’s a little extra motivation for a team that’s a one seed,” the coach assured, “we’re going to have it.”
USC already didn’t need any added incentive after the disheartening way its last outing ended, with a loss to UCLA in the Big Ten tournament final. That loss, just its third of the season and its first in three matchups with the Bruins, gave the Trojans “a chip on our shoulder,” Watkins said. It also appears to have bumped the Trojans out of the tournament’s top overall spot.
But it’s precisely how USC has responded to setbacks this season that gives Watkins confidence that the best is still to come. When the Trojans dropped their first game to Notre Dame back in November, they proceeded to win 15 in a row. Their loss to Iowa in February sparked a nine-game win streak.
In between, there has been plenty of soul-searching.
“This season has not been pretty,” Watkins said. “There were moments when we could’ve given up. But we didn’t, and I think that speaks to our resilience and our will to want to win and just play together.”
USC star JuJu Watkins reacts to getting a slap on the behind from former USC star Cheryl Miller after scoring against rival UCLA on March 1.
(Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)
Where USC entered March last season as a program on the rise, just hoping to crash the party for the sport’s more established powerhouses, the Trojans now enter this tournament with not just Final Four aspirations, but expectations.
It’s been almost four decades since USC made a Final Four, the last coming when Cheryl Miller led the team to the national title game, where they lost to Texas.
This season offers the best hope in nearly four decades that USC might have what it takes to return. And with that in mind, the players knew simply being named a No. 1 seed only means so much.
“I don’t want to say we expected it,” freshman Kennedy Smith said, “but I feel like we’ve earned what we had. Time to lock in on what the plan is. And that’s win a national championship.”