USC, UCLA descend on women's Big Ten Tournament, plus other top stories to watch in Indianapolis

03/07/2025 12:31 PM

The first year of an 18-team Big Ten culminates Sunday, but who will win and can anyone stop the Trojans?

When the Big Ten expanded to 18 teams, football was at the forefront. Conference alignment means larger television contracts with everyone in the country wanting to see the best teams play each other every week. What wasn't a likely part of those conversations was how expansion would shape the fabric of women's basketball in the Big Ten.

In the first season, two of the four teams added to the conference shot to the top of the conversation.

The UCLA Bruins and USC Trojans brought not only a strong heritage of women's basketball with names like Cheryl Miller and Ann Meyers-Drysdale gracing the universities' halls, but some of the best players in the country. Now, those players who led the two sides to a one-two in the regular season standings battle for their first Big Ten Tournament trophies.

Starting Friday, the top four seeds of the conference join the field and within those teams are two National Player of the Year candidates, a team overcoming injuries and another hoping to hear their name called early on Selection Sunday.

Those stories and more highlight the most anticipated weekend of basketball, outside of March Madness itself.

Trojans & Bruins Take the Midwest

In the preseason Big Ten poll, media and coaches voted the USC Trojans and UCLA Bruins as No. 1 and No. 2 in the conference, respectively. That vote hit the nail on the head, and any team that tried to dethrone the Los Angeles sides had little to no success.

The Trojans were undefeated at home against teams outside of the traffic congested California metropolis. With every team in the Big Ten playing each school at least once, eight programs traveled to Los Angeles and none of them came away with a victory. Some were close, but the Bruins and Trojans showed that they are in a tier above the remaining 16 Big Ten schools.

UCLA and USC weren't only successful, they were dominant at home. Only three times in 16 games did the two teams allow an opponent to hit 70 points scored. Bruins center Lauren Betts, who won Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year, led UCLA defensively to a 13.9 average margin of victory in conference play, and only let one opposing team not named USC score at least 70 points once on their home court.

USC was even better, losing one game all season (more on that later) and beating opponents by 16.2 points per game. To put that into perspective, the next closest to the LA sides was Ohio State who only beat teams with a 7.1-point average margin per game.

However, anything can happen in the postseason. Now, the two teams add three hours to their clocks and need to win three games in three days to cement expectations entering this year. How does the weight of expectation travel an can any team beat two sides that are seemingly unbeatable?

Can UCLA Beat the Trojans?

Big Ten Head Coach of the Year Lindsay Gottlieb's USC Trojans weren't phased in the regular season and won the sole Big Ten regular season title. USC did it with an impressive 17-1 record and that one loss didn't come against the Bruins.

In two games, USC played a UCLA team ranked higher nationally in the Associate Press' weekly poll and each time the Trojans came away with an impressive victory.

On February 13, it was Big Ten Player of the Year winning-guard JuJu Watkins. The sophomore nearly had a triple-double with 38 points, 11 rebounds and 8 blocks, a scoring high for Watkins in conference play. The performance by Watkins went a long way in securing that individual postseason award with popular opinion swinging towards Betts as the pick for the Big Ten's top player.

Then on March 1, Watkins led scorers again with 30 points in an 80-67 Trojans victory on home court. A win that secured the Big Ten title on the final day of the regular season. Now, if the top-two teams in the regular season follow their current trajectory and face-off in Sunday's tournament final, can UCLA bounce back?

The Bruins have a strong inside game with the 6-foot-7 Betts in the paint and guard Kiki Rice patrolling the perimeter, but playing UCLA only seems to motivate Watkins more. What lessons have the Bruins learned, or will learn in the conference tournament, that can help them overcome a side that they haven't had much success against this season?

Early morning Trojans

For all the much-deserved excitement regarding the Trojans' electric debut season in the Big Ten, there is one downside to winning the overall No. 1 seed — the time difference of USC's first game.

The No. 1 seed has an easier road, facing higher ranked teams, but the Trojans start that slightly easier road at Noon ET but inside the bodies of the USC players it'll feel like 9:00 a.m. PT.

USC played two games this season at Noon ET. The first was technically five hours ahead, in Paris, France against the Ole Miss Rebels. The other game coincidentally enough came against the Indiana Hoosiers, who USC will face on Friday at lunchtime.

Watkins led USC again with 22 points in a seven-point win over the Hoosiers, but it wasn't easy. Indiana entered the fourth quarter down only one point after going into halftime with a six-point deficit.

On Thursday, the Hoosiers started strong against a tough Oregon Ducks defense with 15 of the first 19 points going to Indiana. Guards Yarden Garzon and Shay Ciezki went 7-of-12 from beyond the arc to beat the Ducks 78-62 in Oregon's first game of the tournament. A game that started at noon.

Indiana lost to the Ducks soundly in the regular season, scoring only 47 points in Eugene. The Hoosiers also have a distinct advantage of playing in their home state, only roughly 45 minutes from Assembly Hall.

It makes for a potentially tough first day of the tournament for USC. Lose and it will be the No. 1 seed's only day of the tournament, which would be the second season in a row that the Big Ten's top seed fell in the quarterfinals of the conference tournament.

Iowa Upset Watch

Sitting in Gainbridge Fieldhouse on the first two days is a familiar name for Big Ten fans, and really anyone who has watched women's basketball at any level over the past three years. Former National Player of the Year Caitlin Clark does not have a long drive as a member of the Indiana Fever of the WNBA and the former Iowa Hawkeye watched her former team win their first two games of the tournament as a No. 11 seed.

The Hawkeyes beat the No. 14 Wisconsin Badgers on Wednesday, in a game they were more than favored to win, but Thursday night Iowa upset the Michigan State Spartans. Iowa beat the No. 24 ranked Spartans after losing by a single basket back in December.

Since January 22, the Hawkeyes only have two losses. Before that hot streak, first year Iowa head coach Jan Jensen's side struggled with forward Hannah Stuelke moving from her normal No. 5 role to more of a power forward position. It stifled the Iowa offense and the Hawkeyes loss five of six games in a row to start the 2025 calendar year.

When Iowa got going, they were hard to stop including handing the Trojans their lone loss of the season on Clark's jersey retirement game on Feb. 2. Even the losses were impressive. The first came against Ohio State where guard Lucy Olsen nearly single-handedly erased a 14-point deficit in the final 1:38 of the fourth quarter, only to lose in overtime. The next game was their second loss, falling at home to UCLA by a single basket.

Now Iowa play the Buckeyes again, on Friday. Can the Cinderella story of the tournament continue? Will Clark make another court side appearance? Should the wins continue, Iowa is could win a fourth Big Ten Tournament in a row, a conference record.

Ohio State's battle for NCAA seeding

Bracketology experts have the Big Ten with potentially 13 teams in the March Madness field. However, only two of them are predicted to be top-four seeds, which earns teams the right to host the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament.

Ohio State is on the fringe of those 16 hosting teams. The NCAA Tournament committee released two top-16 seed lists in February and the Buckeyes began as a No. 14 seed and dropped to No. 16 on Feb. 27. Since then, Ohio State lost to the Maryland Terrapins in College Park, in overtime. A defeat that isn't helping the side's cause and potentially hopping on a plane in two weeks.

That means this tournament is crucial for the Buckeyes to reinforce their resume.

The Buckeyes earned a No. 3 seed and face the dangerous Iowa Hawkeyes to start but Ohio State's shown some fight despite a bad result to end the regular season. In Maryland, the Buckeyes had freshman point guard Jaloni Cambridge for only 18 minutes due to foul trouble. The top scorer on the team, forward Cotie McMahon, had to sit for much of the second half for the same reason, and even without the two, Ohio State came back from nine points down in the second half to force overtime.

Last season, the Buckeyes came into the Big Ten Tournament as the No. 1 seed and left after two hours when Maryland beat them in a rout. Ohio State doesn't have the same expectations or impression that they can just walk onto the court and win. The Buckeyes have fight and haven't hit their peak yet. Can that happen in Indianapolis and carry the team into the NCAA Tournament?