As the CBS network announcers noted Sunday afternoon, a good portion of L.A. took over Indianapolis’ Gainbridge Fieldhouse Sunday afternoon for the women’s championship game of the Big Ten tournament. In an unusual (to say the least) college sports season, maybe that was the most delightfully weird event of all.
UCLA (30-2) and USC (28-3) have been the two best teams in Big Ten women’s basketball, by far, and two of the best in the country without a doubt. And No. 4 UCLA’s 72-67 victory Sunday – after No. 2 USC had swept the regular season series and put the only blemishes on UCLA’s record – may have earned the Bruins the No. 1 overall seed in what is now a 68-team women’s bracket, which will be revealed next Sunday.
USC coach Lindsay Gottlieb told reporters in the postgame press conference in Indianapolis that she’d thought that whoever won that final should be the overall No. 1 seed.
“I do think I would agree with her,” UCLA coach Cori Close said after she reached the podium. “Obviously, USC is an excellent team and they’ve handed it to us twice. But the fact (is) that they’ve been our only two losses, we were No. 1 in the country for (12) weeks …
“They’re an excellent team. They’re a championship-caliber team. And I remember the very first time we played at their place, Lindsay said. ‘I’m really hoping we’re going to get to do this four times.’ And I think that it would mean a lot for us both to be No. 1 seeds. You have to prove yourself, right? Your play has to back that up. And I hope we do get a chance to do it in Tampa (for) a fourth time.”
Tampa, of course, is where the Final Four will be held, April 4-6. Wouldn’t a USC-UCLA battle on April 6, with everything on the line, be a blast?
There’s a lot between now and then. It’s likely that the Bruins and Trojans will both be No. 1 regional seeds, will host subregionals the weekend after next and, assuming both win twice, will both wind up in Spokane, where two of the four regionals will be held the weekend of March 28-29.
Close’s mood obviously was a lot better this weekend than it was last Saturday night in Pauley, when USC laid an 80-67 whipping on UCLA. The Bruins were down 45-35 at halftime Sunday but tightened the defensive screws in the second half, holding the Trojans to 22 percent shooting overall (8 of 36) and 2 for 15 from beyond the 3-point arc, and limiting JuJu Watkins to 4 for 15 shooting in the second half.
Before Sunday, in JuJu’s two seasons at USC her teams had beaten UCLA four times in five games. This was different. Even though Watkins finished with 29 points, seven of them came in the final 1:13, when the Women of Troy were desperately trying to catch up. Before that, she was 1 for 12 from the field in the second half.
“I think we came up with the right energy,” Watkins said. “I just don’t think our shots were falling. And, you know, we tried to to get it back and we couldn’t.”
UCLA players had talked of wanting to play USC again, which is a natural reaction after a team has spanked you. But let’s not get carried away here. The Trojans wanted the Bruins, too. It’s a rivalry, no other explanation needed.
“I think it’s always hard (to face a team) three times, even two times, just knowing that we’ve already done our scout, they’ve done (their) scout, so figuring out ways to tweak it,” Watkins said. “But we were excited to play them as well. It’s not like we shy away from competition. We’re always grateful to play them because they push us and we push them.”
And this is the point of the basketball season where, while a loss might seem crushing for the moment, it can also provide motivation for the future.
“The two losses that we’ve had prior to this (to Notre Dame in December and at Iowa in February), I thought our team responded and really bounced forward,” Gottlieb said. “And that’s what we’ll do heading into the NCAA tournament. And my guess is this is going to make us even better (since) that half of basketball will be out of us.”
That’s how UCLA responded not only Sunday but through the entire three-game stretch in Indianapolis.
“We made a really big emphasis on rebounding, getting those 50-50 balls,” Kiki Rice said. And even though I think they ended up outrebounding us, we still found a way in the second half to really turn that up and just hustle and fight, and that’s what we lacked the previous two times we played them.”
Who could possibly have imagined, years ago, that the road to a Big Ten championship would run through Los Angeles?
“This is a really talented team, and we knew that we were coming to an amazing conference,” Lauren Betts said. “We never doubted that. But we put in a lot of work all preseason. And we had the confidence that we were going to win this tournament, and no one was going to deny us from that.
“The work that was done in the dark, it just showed today.”
At this point UCLA has its best women’s basketball winning percentage ever (.909) and the program’s first 30-victory season. The program’s gold standard probably remains the 1977-78 Bruins, coached by Billie Moore and featuring four-time All-American Ann Meyers (now Ann Meyers Drysdale). They were 27-3 (.900) and hung a banner as AIAW national champions, four years before the NCAA first held a women’s basketball championship tournament.
But there’s obviously still plenty to accomplish here, against a much more competitive field than existed in ’78. And Close added something you might not expect regarding a team that had been No. 1 for so much of the season.
“It’s interesting, as good as we’ve been, we’re not as confident as you would think,” she said. “And I think they earned some more confidence tonight. I think you want your team hungry and edgy going into the NCAA tournament, but also really confident.
“I think our team earned some confidence tonight. And I think that’s going to go a long way.”
In other words, look out.
jalexander@scng.com