{"id":221515,"date":"2026-03-16T02:46:20","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T02:46:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/221515\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T02:46:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T02:46:20","slug":"jazzy-davidson-and-usc-women-face-tough-ncaa-tournament-path","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/221515\/","title":{"rendered":"Jazzy Davidson and USC women face tough NCAA tournament path"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

After an up-and-down season without its injured superstar, USC<\/a> still managed to make it back to the NCAA tournament<\/a>. But its path won\u2019t get any smoother from here.<\/p>\n

The Trojans clinched a berth for the fourth straight season on Sunday. They\u2019ll be a No. 9 seed, set to face No. 8-seed Clemson in Columbia, S.C., on Saturday.<\/p>\n

While the Trojans will have to travel across the country to take on Clemson, the Tigers will only have a two-hour drive from their campus.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe won\u2019t have the home-court advantage, obviously,\u201d USC coach Lindsay Gottlieb<\/a> said. \u201cBut we\u2019ll bring our West Coast juice. We\u2019ll bring our energy. And I think we\u2019ll see the best version of ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

A win in that game would set up a rematch in Columbia with No. 1-seed South Carolina, who beat the Trojans handily when they met in November.<\/p>\n

History won\u2019t be on the Trojans\u2019 side in that matchup, either. Only twice in the last 15 years has a No. 8 or No. 9 seed in the women\u2019s tournament upset a No. 1.<\/p>\n

But USC isn\u2019t a run-of-the-mill ninth seed, either. The Trojans played one of the nation\u2019s toughest schedules, with 15 games against teams seeded higher than them in the tournament. Four of those were against No. 1 seeds, all losses.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe intentionally put ourselves in the situation to play the best teams out there because that\u2019s what we want to be ready for,\u201d Gottlieb said. \u201cWe\u2019re not afraid of really good teams.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just a year ago, USC entered March as one of the favorites to win the national title. But then JuJu Watkins injured her knee<\/a> in the second round. The injury forced her to sit out the entire season, throwing a serious wrench in USC\u2019s plans for the 2025-26 season.<\/p>\n

The Trojans relied on another dazzling young talent, Jazzy Davidson<\/a>, to carry them to March instead. And Davidson delivered, leading the Trojans in points (17.6), rebounds (5.6), assists (4.2), blocks (2) and steals (2). She was even named Big Ten Freshman of the Year.<\/p>\n

USC opened the season 10-3, with two of those losses coming against two No. 1 seeds, Connecticut and South Carolina. But the rest of the Big Ten season would prove to be a frustrating affair. The Trojans lost six of seven, before bouncing back to win six straight. They ultimately ended the regular season on a four-game losing streak, stumbling their way to a one-and-done finish in the Big Ten tournament.<\/p>\n

But that winding path no longer mattered as of Sunday. USC made the NCAA tournament, in spite of everything working against it.<\/p>\n

Now, with its slate clean, the Trojans had a new rallying cry ahead of the tournament.<\/p>\n

\u201cBe the team,\u201d guard Kara Dunn said, \u201cthat someone else doesn\u2019t want to play.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After an up-and-down season without its injured superstar, USC still managed to make it back to the NCAA…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[101263,101264,81080,41390,12411,48,52,51,47,50,49,2959,101262,18158,7556,15192,101265,23138,101261,3533,72],"class_list":["post-221515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-basketball-tournament","tag-big-ten-freshman","tag-clemson","tag-columbia","tag-first-round","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-march","tag-ncaa-woman","tag-no","tag-rebound","tag-seed","tag-seed-south-carolina","tag-trojans","tag-up-and-down-season","tag-usc","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221515","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=221515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}