Luca Evans (OC Register)  —  LOS ANGELES — A few days ago, JuJu Watkins walked into Lindsay Gottlieb’s office like a different person.

At the beginning of April, she’d broken down in tears at the postgame podium in Portland, mourning the loss of her freshman season as USC’s monumental run was ended by UConn in the Elite Eight. And Watkins never felt like a freshman, as Gottlieb reflected – but she carried herself like a sophomore, entering that office, the two discussing the future in what the Trojans head coach called “maybe one of the best exit, postseason meetings I’ve ever had.”

“She and I challenged each other,” Gottlieb reflected. “We both know, this wasn’t the pinnacle. Like, there’s so much more for us to do.”

A day after Gottlieb returned home from Portland, she hopped on a flight to Cleveland, a chance revisit her family’s old home in her previous stop as an assistant with the Cavaliers, a chance to watch the Final Four march on without USC. Slowly, gratitude emerged from a melting pot of emotions, for a season of inspiration around USC and celebration for a team that lifted the program back to heights it hadn’t seen in decades.

But Gottlieb still stung every time she saw a UConn sign. That could’ve been us.

After a 29-6 season, a Pac-12 Tournament championship and Elite Eight berth, USC has plenty of work to do – losing its triumvirate of Ivy League transfers in McKenzie Forbes, Kayla Padilla and Kaitlyn Davis – but few programs in the country are better positioned for a climb to the top of collegiate women’s basketball.

Watkins, after a freshman All-American season, and Gottlieb have three more years to build together. And USC inherits perhaps the best recruiting class in the country, with Etiwanda’s Kennedy Smith, dynamic guards Kayleigh Heckel, Avery Howell and Rian Forestier, and bigs Vivian Iwuchukwu and Laura Williams.

Two weeks after the loss to UConn, the Southern California News Group spoke with Gottlieb, looking to next season and beyond.

“I feel like I’m invested in this administration to say, ‘OK, what’s next?’ Gottlieb said. “It’s an incredible time for women’s basketball, and I think our place in it is really significant. And we want to continue to move the needle.

Responses have been condensed and lightly edited for concision and clarity.

Q: You saw the record-breaking viewership numbers for the Final Four and the national championship. What was your reaction to that continual societal boom and where you feel this program’s place in that can be?

Gottlieb: Yeah, it’s incredible. I think the timing is, like, unbelievable.

Women’s basketball has been good for a number of years, the players have been exceptional for a number of years. But now, this culmination of it being on TV, there being more marketing put into it, social media, we’re now at this inflection point. And I think that we (USC) have the brightest star moving forward, we have a program that is on the rise, we have a brand name. So we understand, there’s incredible opportunity in that, there’s incredible responsibility in that, and we’re excited to take that all on, but we also know it’s a little bit uncharted territory. And we’re trying to be as prepared as possible but also think as big as possible.

Q: Looking ahead to next year, you’re inheriting a very deep and talented freshman class, but at the same time losing some pretty key veteran leadership with the Ivys. From a chemistry and leadership standpoint, do you look at growth from JuJu Watkins and returners to replace that, or are you also looking for a veteran presence to come in through the portal?

Gottlieb: I think both, right. I think – nobody’s standing pat. Everyone’s trying to get better. South Carolina’s trying to get better. UConn’s trying to get better. UCLA, USC, we’re all trying to get better. So, there are a number of ways to get better …

In the past couple of seasons, we’ve had to almost rebuild the roster in the portal, or really go to the portal to kind of shape the roster. That’s obviously not the stage that we’re at, but we really believe in this freshman class, we believe in the returning players and their growth process, and at the same time, to be able to add a veteran presence is something that, certainly, we will look into.

Q: Kennedy Smith, from knowing her high school background, she obviously wasn’t looking to take a backseat in her collegiate program – a talented player and a clear-cut rival, in some cases, to JuJu in high school. What was your message to Kennedy as far as making that combination work?

Gottlieb: The cool part about the kids we’ve signed this resurgence is that, you probably don’t want to come here unless you’re a winner. Right, like, we assigned – that’s what we’re looking for. Winners. More than positionally.

And Kennedy and JuJu both want to win. And they both believe in the program, and their own abilities. So I didn’t have to do much convincing other than to say, ‘JuJu’s an amazing kid, as are you – you both want to win, think about each of you on the court together and that’s going to be terrible for opponents.’

And one conversation with JuJu, and I think she felt that, right. Like, you go from rivals to friends pretty quick when you talk to each of them, because they’re very like-minded in terms of their goals. So, yeah, it wasn’t a hard sell. Like, JuJu’s not a hard sell. If you’re a winner, you want to play with her. And obviously, she’s a wonderful kid.

But yes, she was integral in the recruitment of Kennedy, because they’re very like-minded, and I 1000% think they fit together. They’re both so versatile.

Q: In thinking about building this incoming class – things obviously happened a little bit quicker this year than maybe what a lot of people were intending.  Did that development track almost speed along, all of a sudden you can say to this class – ‘Hey, this is the situation you’re coming into, we’re ready to compete at the highest possible level right away?’

Gottlieb: Definitely, I would say – most of this class signed or committed before we had the season that we had. Certainly, they signed after we had an NCAA Tournament season in (2022-23), and I think you saw a little bit, maybe, what we were capable of, or the direction that we’re going. They all knew JuJu was here. So yes, I think they still believed in the trajectory of what we could be.

And so, now that we had the season we had, I think we can look at all of ‘em and say, the bar’s been raised. I think all of them signed here to want to go to a Final Four – we were talking about that in their recruitment, but now it’s maybe a little bit more tangible. But now, I’m going to tell them, ‘Nothing we did last year gives us any points this year. Nothing we did last year gives us a last year this year.’

So I think, it’s an opportunity for me to continue to build that winning culture, to continue to turn ourselves into the premier program in the country. I mean, we are chasing South Carolina, right? We are chasing UConn, who just beat us. Like, we want to be Big Ten champions, we want to be national champions, so there’s a lot more work to do.

And yeah, I do think this in particular group, like I said – a bunch of winners, a bunch of competitors, knew they were coming to play with JuJu, knew they were joining something, but now the bar is raised.

Q: Does anything change in terms of your vision or how you’re viewing the program’s trajectory entering the Big Ten?

Gottlieb: No. I mean, I think the things that will be different this summer and fall are that, we have freshman instead of having a bunch of Ivy League graduates. I mean, I joked with everyone, like, ‘You had a summer off last summer.’ I mean, everyone from support staff to coaches, in terms of, we have to really do things differently to get seven freshmen ready versus getting four grad transfers.

As for the Big Ten, I think we will spend more time in the fall and the summer studying opponents than we would, because, I knew the Pac-12 Conference schools like the back of my hand, just like they know us, kind of, although we played a little differently this year, but.

Yeah, I think we can do the best we can to learn from other people, but it doesn’t change how we play. Like, we’re trying to have USC be a blueprint, right. Like, we’re not going to adapt to other people. We’re going to try to be the best team in the country the way we play, and make people adjust to us.

ocregister.com

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