Can USC Women’s Basketball Overcome a Four-Game Slump to Keep NCAA Dreams Alive?

There’s a raw, almost palpable tension hanging over USC’s women’s basketball program right now — and it was on full display during their recent clash with Maryland. Jazzy Davidson burst out of the gates, lighting up the first quarter with a flurry of points and a couple of slick assists, like a shot of adrenaline the Trojans desperately needed after hitting a losing skid. Yet, despite taking an early eight-point lead, USC couldn’t hold their ground once again, dropping their fourth consecutive game and reminding everyone just how fragile momentum can be. This slump isn’t just a rough patch; it’s the first streak of this length since the dreaded 2021-22 season, a season that ended with the program missing the NCAA Tournament altogether — a ghost that still looms large.

What’s puzzling—and frankly, frustrating—is that USC’s defense has been solid, ranking impressively among the nation’s best. Still, when the offense stumbles, the scoreboard tells a different story. Davidson’s offensive struggles, following an explosive start, are emblematic of deeper issues: a roster stretched thin, missing key veterans like JuJu Watkins, and lacking consistent scoring options. Coach Lindsay Gottlieb’s battle-tested mindset — insisting they’ll “fight their way through it” — speaks to the resilience demanded in this brutal Big Ten gauntlet. But with injuries, youth, and the ever-shifting transfer landscape playing out before us, it’s clear the path forward is anything but smooth. The Trojans are caught in a season where patience is tested, future ambitions collide with present hardships, and every game feels like a crucible.

LEARN MORE

LOS ANGELES — Jazzy Davidson started Thursday’s game against Maryland as if she was shot out of a cannon. A woman possessed, eager to end USC’s three-game losing streak and get the Trojans back to .500 in Big Ten play.

She exploded for 12 points in the first quarter and accounted for two more on an assist. Those would be Davidson’s only points of the night, however. USC’s eight-point first-half lead resulted in another fall-from-ahead defeat, 62-55, after the Trojans blew a 13-point lead against Minnesota and a 17-point advantage against Oregon in their previous two games. Their four-game losing streak is their first since 2021-22, the last time the program failed to qualify for the NCAA Tournament.

“No one wants to be in a situation where things are hard, but your only option is to figure it out and fight your way through it,” coach Lindsay Gottlieb said.

USC is 10-7, 2-4 in the Big Ten, and has already lost more games this season than in any since JuJu Watkins arrived on campus. Watkins won’t be coming back to help this year’s team, and the Trojans need to win more games than they lose the rest of the way to ensure a fourth consecutive berth to the big dance.

USC’s defense has been mostly up to par, ranked in the 90th percentile nationally entering Thursday’s game, per CBB Analytics. The Trojans held the Terrapins, who averaged 87 points per game, to 62 and attempted 21 more field goals than their opposition. They have some difficulties keeping teams out of the paint due to their size constraints, but the problem is the offensive end, where everything is challenging.

Davidson’s shooting struggles are the tip of the iceberg. The freshman is an outstanding defensive playmaker and can put up points in a hurry in transition. She leads the Big Ten in blocks (2.5 per game) and adds another 1.8 steals per contest, and she uses those giveaways to great effect. When the pace slows, and defenses key in on her in the halfcourt, buckets have been harder to come by. Davidson is shooting 35 percent from the field in Big Ten play, and 28.3 percent from beyond the arc. After getting blistered by Davidson in the opening frame, Maryland went to a zone and forced Davidson to beat them from outside; she shot 0 of 14 over the final three quarters, missing seven 3-pointers in the process.

There isn’t enough offensive talent on the roster to make life easier for Davidson. USC is shooting 39.5 percent from the field and leaving points on the table by only making 67.6 percent of its free throws. Kara Dunn is the only player converting at even an average rate for her position; her 21 points Thursday were the Trojans’ only consistent source of offense for most of the game.

The offensive issues have been compounded in this stretch by an injury to Kennedy Smith, who was originally listed as day-to-day, but has missed three games over ten days. Gottlieb said the sophomore’s return will be sooner than later. In the meantime, her absence has been particularly felt in late-game execution. USC didn’t get to its desired looks on late-game after-timeout plays against the Ducks, the Gophers, or the Terrapins. The Trojans are hopelessly undersized without Smith on the wing, playing a pair of sub-5-foot-6 guards together in Londynn Jones and Malia Samuels. That compromises them on the defensive glass and allows bigger defenders to crowd Davidson down the stretch.

So many of the problems USC faces should have been expected; they are structural defects within a roster that is missing Watkins for the season and was decimated in the transfer portal by the departures of Avery Howell and Kayleigh Heckel. A promising start to the season, headlined by Davidson’s fourth-quarter rally against NC State, may have given the team false hope that a singularly-talented freshman could paper over some flaws on the roster, like Watkins in 2023-24. But Davidson isn’t the isolation scorer that Watkins is, and the defensive grittiness can’t compensate for the sustained scoring droughts the Trojans experience on a regular basis.

It begs the question of what USC should be trying to accomplish in 2025-26. Watkins will return next season, and Davidson will slide down into a usage role that allows her to be more efficient, especially with the arrival of No. 1 recruit Saniyah Hall. Ideally, the Trojans would be using this year to figure out what they have to complement that wing trio.

But USC isn’t treating this as a gap year. Perhaps it’s the precarious nature of roster-building in the portal era that has guarded the Trojans against looking beyond this current season. Nevertheless, after Davidson, the players with the highest usage rates are Dunn and Jones — two fourth-year transfers who won’t be on the team next year. Gottlieb has given her young posts an opportunity to prove themselves, but that’s as much an exercise in improving this iteration of the team as it is for next year. It’s unclear what USC has in perimeter depth beyond its starting group; sophomore guards Rian Forestier and Brooklyn Shamblin — part of last season’s heralded recruiting class — can’t get off the bench, even with Smith out of the lineup.

The Trojans are going through serious growing pains with only two returning players from last year’s Big Ten champions. They’re chasing a goal that doesn’t seem to be within reach, and it’s not clear that they need to, given the talent influx that awaits in 2026.

The Big Ten is a challenging conference that will send a double-digit number of teams to the NCAA Tournament. Every squad is going to go through lulls in the conference schedule, other than perhaps UCLA. But despite Gottlieb calling this period “our rough time,” this isn’t even the toughest stretch of the calendar that USC will face. After a slight respite against Purdue, the Trojans play three ranked opponents (Michigan State, Michigan and Iowa) to close out the month, with the first two games on the road. Things could get much worse before they get better.

USC isn’t content to let this group play out the string. After practically steaming with rage following the defeat to Oregon — the coach acknowledged that her upperclassmen had never seen her as fiery in their college careers — Gottlieb was far more optimistic after the loss to Maryland, insisting that USC will “come out the other end stronger.”

Maybe that’s what a coach has to say in the depths of a season, when the players are giving it their all and the results aren’t coming. That going through adversity has to have a silver lining. Or maybe Gottlieb genuinely believes that Smith’s return will get the Trojans over the hump and back to contending in the Big Ten.

The problem is that the players who are experiencing this pain aren’t the ones who will have a chance to turn it into something greater next season. Dunn, Jones and Samuels aren’t the future of the USC program. Thursday’s loss was another indicator that the Trojans aren’t prioritizing the future as much as they should, and still holding onto the hopes of what this season could have been.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

USC Trojans, Women’s College Basketball

2026 The Athletic Media Company