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.
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.
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