No. 1 seed USC enters women’s NCAA tournament with championship expectations
USC star JuJu Watkins and the Trojans enter the NCAA tournament with the expectation they will reach the Final Four and compete for a national title. (Mark J. Terrill / AP)
Ryan Kartje/Mirjam Swanson (LA Times/OC Register) — When USC rose last March to the top line of the NCAA tournament, after almost four decades in relative obscurity, it felt at the time like the culmination of a once-proud program’s stirring return to relevance.
But a year later, standing atop the tournament field for a second straight season, no one is looking at the top-seeded Trojans as a charming upstart any longer.
USC once again earned a No. 1 seed, this time in the Spokane regional, and will host No. 16 seed UNC Greensboro (25-6) in the first round of the NCAA tournament on Saturday. If the Trojans win, they will face the winner of No. 8 Cal (25-8) vs. No. 9 Mississippi State (21-11) on Monday.
Where USC entered March last season as a program on the rise, just hoping to crash the party featuring the sport’s more established powerhouses, the Trojans now enter this tournament with not just Final Four aspirations, but expectations.
USC hasn’t made a Final Four since 1986, when Cheryl Miller and Co. lost to Texas in the national title game.
The Trojans have had little trouble delivering on towering expectations so far this season, led by sophomore superstar and Big Ten Player of the Year JuJu Watkins. They lost just two games in the regular season — once in November, the other in February — to teams now seeded among the top two in their respective regions.
USC enters this tournament coming off a loss after falling to UCLA in the Big Ten tournament final last weekend. But the Trojans had already beaten their crosstown rivals twice before that to secure a Big Ten regular season title, the first in their new conference.
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 / AP)
Last March, as a No. 1 seed for the first time since that 1985-86 season, USC rolled into the Elite Eight, only to run into a buzzsaw in Connecticut, a program that had been to the Final Four in 14 of the previous 15 years.
But USC has even more firepower at its disposal in this tournament, having added an All-Big Ten forward in Kiki Iriafen, as well as the nation’s top recruiting class, to join with Watkins.
Still, USC Ends Up With Obviously Disrespectful #1 Seed
What irked Trojan coach Lindsay Gottlieb, and rightly so, was that out of the four No. 1 seeds, the Trojans fell to the fourth.
Ahead of them, No. 1 overall seed UCLA, “as they should be,” Gottlieb stressed.
But the Bruins were immediately followed by South Carolina and Texas, even though USC beat UCLA two of three times this season and South Carolina lost to the Bruins 77-62.
And even though South Carolina lost by 29 points to UConn, which USC beat in a non-conference showdown in Connecticut.
And even though Texas, like USC, lost to Notre Dame and also lost to South Carolina twice.
How USC slipped behind both of those teams is a mystery.
“I don’t understand people who make decisions in women’s basketball and why they do what they do, none of it makes sense to me,” said Gottlieb, who wasn’t just perplexed but admittedly and surprisingly agitated – and speaking for a whole lot of us.”
Any of us who looked at the bracket and immediately saw, among whatever other bracket-building shenanigans got revealed, a particularly heinous affront to women’s basketball’s growing audience.
Sitting at No. 2 in USC’s corner of the bracket: UConn.
That means we’re going to lose either Watkins, everyone’s national player of the year, or Paige Bueckers, one of the game’s biggest and most-beloved stars and presumptive No. 1 pick in the next WNBA Draft, before the Final Four.
“Wouldn’t you think they’d want the best television ratings in Tampa at the Final Four,” asked Gottlieb?
It was a rhetorical question, but I’ll answer it anyway: Yes! Yes, we sure would! Especially when that’s what is merited.
“This is not an arrogance of any kind, there’s a lot of really good teams,” Gottlieb said, with a nod to a field that doesn’t feature a single undefeated or even a one-loss team for just the second time in 19 years. “And you have to play the first game in front of you and earn your way from there.”
But, really: “This was not on my bingo card. I don’t like being disrespected.”
“If there’s a little extra motivation for a team that’s already a No. 1 seed,” Gottlieb said, “we’re gonna have it.”
latimes.com / ocregister.com
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