USC women’s basketball deserves more than March

Trojan fans show up before March makes USC women’s basketball a trend.

Galen Center gets louder; USC jerseys become much easier to spot around campus; fans who have not mentioned a screen in months are suddenly asking whether USC’s women’s basketball team can make a Final Four run.

That excitement is fun. But it is also a little backward.

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USC women’s basketball should not need a tournament run, a national broadcast or a viral social media moment to convince students it is worth their time. The team deserves a fan base who shows up when the season begins, not one that only arrives once March gives everyone permission to care.

This year, there are plenty of reasons to pay attention early. Senior guard JuJu Watkins is back, and her Big Ten Preseason Player of the Year honoree status only cements what college basketball already knows: She is one of the sport’s biggest stars. 

Sophomore guard Jazzy Davidson spent last season proving she is much more than a name attached to Watkins. Together, they give USC the kind of star power that turns a regular game into a must-see event. 

But the most interesting part of this season should not be the display of a superteam — it should be the chance to watch a team become one.

College basketball does not work like a highlight reel. Teams become great through small adjustments, unexpected contributors and the trust that develops when players have time to learn one another. 

The games people remember in March are usually shaped by the ones that received far less attention in the earlier months of the season. An extra defensive stop, a bench unit finding its rhythm or a team learning to close a tight game may not make a TikTok edit, but it can determine whether a season ends in celebration or disappointment. 

That is why treating women’s basketball as a trend does a great team a disservice. 

Trends are easy. They ask very little from people: repost a highlight, buy a jersey or get a photo at a sold-out game and move on when the next big thing appears. 

Dedicated fandom asks for more. It means caring when the opponent is not a rival, when the game is not nationally televised and when there is no obvious social media moment waiting at the end of it.

It also means letting the season surprise you. A player such as freshman guard Saniyah Hall could be the one who changes a game in March, even if the early-season conversation is dominated by Watkins and Davidson. That is much more rewarding than arriving once everyone else has decided the team matters. 

I am not saying that every student needs to become a basketball expert overnight. Nobody should have to know every statistic or memorize the full schedule before they can call themselves a fan. 

Fandom usually starts more simply: Someone invites you to a game, you see a player you like, you go because the energy looks fun and then find yourself somehow stressed over a third-quarter run.

The question is whether that first game turns curiosity into commitment. Will students come back? Will they learn the players beyond the most famous names? Will they understand that Watkins and Davidson cannot carry a championship-level season alone? 

And will they recognize the less glamorous work — the extra pass, the tough defensive assignment, the rebound that never becomes a headline — that makes a great team? 

USC’s First Look exhibition against UC Berkeley on Oct. 25 is an easy place to start. It will not have the stakes of a March game, and it doesn’t need them. It is a chance for students to see the Trojans before the season is distilled into expectations, rankings and debates about whether they can win it all. 

There is something better about supporting a team before the rest of the country tells you to. You get to see the season take shape instead of only arriving for its climax. By March, anyone can say they believed in USC women’s basketball. The better question is whether they were there when the team was still giving them reasons to show up.

USC women’s basketball should not wait until March to be discovered. It needs support in October. 

Riya Kalra is a sophomore writing about the intersection of sports and culture in her column, “Beyond the Whistle,” which runs every other Tuesday.