March doesn’t wait for you to catch up — it exposes you.
For No. 9 seed USC, the NCAA tournament offered a chance to prove its rebuild was ahead of schedule. Instead, the second round delivered something closer to a hard truth.
The latest chapter of the “Real SC” series felt less like a rivalry clash and more like a reality check, as USC ran headfirst into the standard set by the No. 1 seed South Carolina Gamecocks and was left overwhelmed in a 101–61 season-ending loss.
“You can lose, you can not necessarily be as good as a team,” USC head coach Lindsay Gottlieb said, “but I thought we were conceding.”
Back in November, the first meeting of the home-and-home — dubbed the “Real SC” series — ended in a controlled 69-52 South Carolina win in Los Angeles.
That game hinted at a gap.
Monday night on the Gamecocks’ home court exposed it.
From the opening tip, South Carolina imposed its identity: size, pressure and relentless depth. Sophomore forward Joyce Edwards and senior center Madina Okot combined to score nine of the Gamecocks’ first 11 points, setting the tone for a dominant interior performance that produced 60 points in the paint and a 43-27 rebounding edge.
By halftime, the score was 51-21. The game, and effectively USC’s season, was already decided.
If the November matchup showed a talent gap, this one highlighted a composure gap.
USC committed 27 turnovers, many of them unforced, leading directly to 29 South Carolina points. The Gamecocks’ defensive pressure, a hallmark of head coach Dawn Staley teams, sped USC up, knocked it out of rhythm and never let it recover.
Freshman guard Jazzy Davidson, coming off a 31-point breakout in the first round vs Clemson, finished with 16 points but battled foul trouble and constant pressure. Senior guard Londynn Jones provided a bright spot with 20 points off the bench, but consistency never followed.
“They’re an elite defensive team, there’s no doubt about that. They have been all season. That’s definitely a huge part of their identity,” Davidson said. “We just had to be tougher with the ball throughout the game. The turnovers were another big thing for us just as a group.”
“Careless” was the word Gottlieb used, and it showed in every stretch where the Trojans threatened to stabilize, only to unravel again.
“You don’t need to throw the ball away to the team,” said Gottlieb. “We had some careless things that I wasn’t pleased with and just wanted to see a different competitive level in the second half.”
South Carolina’s machine rolls on to the Sweet Sixteen. Six Gamecocks scored in double figures, led by Edwards with 23 points and 10 rebounds, and Okot with 15 points and 15 rebounds. South Carolina shot 54% from the field, controlled tempo and turned defense into offense all night. It looked, in every sense, like a team built for another deep March run.
Afterward, Davidson didn’t sugarcoat it: “I need to get better. That’s kind of the bottom line… losing this way really sucks, and I think I could have done a lot better for my team today.”
Gottlieb framed the loss as a reference point rather than a failure.
“You’re never going to be sorry to play the best teams,” Gottlieb said. “Maybe if we hadn’t played Notre Dame and UConn and South Carolina (this season), maybe our record would be a little better coming in (to the Women’s NCAA Tournament), but it doesn’t make you a better program.”
The Trojans didn’t meet that standard in their latest matchup against South Carolina. But they now know exactly where it is, and they’ll get another shot at it next November.
And that next meeting could look very different.
Star junior guard JuJu Watkins, who missed the season recovering from an ACL injury, is expected to make her comeback next season. Combined with Davidson’s rapid growth, and two incoming star recruits in five-star international superpower Sitaya Fagan and the No. 1 ranked recruit in the country Saniyah Hall, the Trojans believe this kind of loss can be a turning point rather than a ceiling.
“It’s been hard, obviously, not being exactly at the level and standard that we’ve set,” Gottlieb said. ”And at the same time, I wouldn’t change anything because that’s part of it. It’s the journey and the growth and the learning.”
The gap is real. But now, so is USC’s understanding of what it will take to close it.