{"id":119500,"date":"2026-01-04T06:12:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T06:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/119500\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T06:12:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T06:12:08","slug":"usc-hopes-to-learn-from-most-lopsided-loss-under-coach-lindsey-gottlieb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/119500\/","title":{"rendered":"USC hopes to learn from most lopsided loss under coach Lindsey Gottlieb"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Lindsay Gottlieb<\/a> wanted her USC team to be tested by the best. That\u2019s why she put together one of the most grueling schedules in all of college basketball, with four games against teams ranked in the top four.<\/p>\n

With three of those tests completed, the results haven\u2019t been what she or any of the Trojans hoped for.<\/p>\n

USC<\/a> lost by 17 to No. 2 South Carolina and 28 to No. 1 Connecticut. But neither of those losses was as demoralizing as Saturday night\u2019s setback, as No. 4 UCLA took No. 17 USC to the woodshed in an 80-46 loss<\/a> that would go down as the largest margin of defeat in Gottlieb\u2019s tenure with the Trojans.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got it handed to us,\u201d Gottlieb said. \u201cWe can be honest and say this is an embarrassing loss.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"UCLA <\/p>\n

UCLA center Lauren Betts smothers USC forward Yakiya Milton in the paint Saturday at Pauley Pavilion.<\/p>\n

(Eric Thayer\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

That might be understating it. USC was outshot 53% to 27% by its rival, outrebounded 46 to 26 and outworked in pretty much every sense of the word. The offense was out of sorts. The defense was disastrous, with UCLA<\/a> regularly blowing past USC in the post on its way to 46 points in the paint.<\/p>\n

It was an eye-opening collapse from a team that came into the season still clinging to national title aspirations. To a frustrated Gottlieb it was \u201ca hard lesson that\u2019s painful and not fun\u201d \u2014 but one USC (10-4, 2-1 Big Ten) perhaps needed to learn to take the next step.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen right now in three games that we\u2019re not as competitive as we wanted to be with the top five teams in the country,\u201d Gottlieb said. \u201cBut I\u2019m not sorry we have them on our schedule. We\u2019re not trying to be a top-25 or top-15 team. We\u2019re trying to be the national champions. We\u2019re trying to be the best program in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether that\u2019s possible this season, without injured star JuJu Watkins<\/a>, was in serious doubt after Saturday night.<\/p>\n

In the frontcourt, the Trojans are especially vulnerable. Never was that more clear than in watching UCLA center Lauren Betts<\/a> dominate whomever was in her path Saturday. She finished with 18 points and 12 rebounds, four on offense, simply by overpowering the Trojans. <\/p>\n

Last season USC had veteran bigs in Kiki Iriafen and Rayah Marshall to rely on against Betts and Co. On Saturday, USC forwards Gerda Raulusaityte, Yakiya Milton, Dayana Mendes, Vivian Iwuchukwu and Laura Williams finished a combined one for 13 from the field. <\/p>\n

\"USC <\/p>\n

USC guard Londynn Jones tries to dive past UCLA forward Gabriela Jaquez at Pauley Pavilion on Saturday.<\/p>\n

(Eric Thayer\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

While USC has managed to get by without much from its frontcourt before, UCLA exploited that weakness from the start. The Trojans were five for 24 inside the arc through one half, left to rely instead on their long-range shooting, which mostly has been hit or miss.<\/p>\n

That was enough to keep up for one quarter, as USC hit six of its first eight three-point attempts to offset its issues inside. With five minutes left in the half, the Trojans were down by just one.<\/p>\n

But from that point those shots stopped falling. UCLA fired off a 14-0 run as USC went scoreless for five full minutes. The Trojans never recovered after that.<\/p>\n

Kara Dunn finished with a team-high 11 points. Jazzy Davidson, the Trojans\u2019 top scorer this season, added 10.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to be as good as we can be, but I think you learn harder lessons when you don\u2019t play as well as you can or we\u2019re undisciplined or we aren\u2019t as focused as we need to be,\u201d Gottlieb said. \u201cMaybe there\u2019s teams we can win against that way, but the ones that punish you when you do it will make you better, and that\u2019s ultimately the lesson.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lindsay Gottlieb wanted her USC team to be tested by the best. That\u2019s why she put together one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":119501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[7363,63208,63206,477,48,52,51,47,50,49,3289,18158,18035,1417,63207,24843,278,427,23138,1092,3533],"class_list":["post-119500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-country","tag-frontcourt","tag-gottlieb","tag-half","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-loss","tag-no","tag-offense","tag-point","tag-rival-ucla","tag-saturday-night","tag-season","tag-team","tag-trojans","tag-ucla","tag-usc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}