USC Trojans earn No. 1 seed in Portland Regional 3
The USC Trojans earned a No. 1 seed in the 2024 NCAA Tournament following their Pac-12 tournament championship run to cap off an outstanding regular season.
This is the fifth time the USC Trojans have earned a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament and the first since 1986.
Lindsay Gottlieb’s program ended the season on an absolute tear, winning 12 of its final 13 games, including two wins against Stanford, beating No. 7 UCLA and posting wins over ranked Oregon State and Colorado teams. USC beat No. 2 Stanford 74-61 in the championship game of the Pac-12 Tournament, finishing the regular season 26-5 overall and ranked No. 3 in the country.
The Trojans finished 2-0 against No. 4 Stanford, 2-1 against No. 6 UCLA, 1-0 against No. 7 Ohio State and 2-0 against No. 12 Oregon State this season. The 26 wins for USC are the most in any season since the 1993-94 team, which had USC and basketball legend Cheryl Miller as head coach.
The Trojans have been led this season by true freshman sensation JuJu Watkins. She leads USC with 27 points and 2.4 steals per game. She’s second with 3.2 assists and 1.5 blocks per game. And she’s been phenomenal at the free throw line, connecting on 208-of-246 attempts for an 84.6% success rate. The 246 attempts are 42% of USC’s team total.
Watkins has gotten plenty of help this season from standout returner Rayah Marshall and a trio of Ivy League transfers in Kayla Padilla, McKenzie Forbes and Kaitlyn Davis. Forbes was named the Pac-12 Tournament Most Outstanding Player and is second on the Trojans with 13.5 points per game, and leads USC with 3.3 assists per game and 64 made three-pointers. Padilla leads the team in three-point shooting at 44.2% and hit some impactful shots during the Pac-12 Tournament run. Marshall has averaged a double-double this season, with 10.2 points and a team-high 10.5 rebounds per game.
USC’s NCAA Tournament Bracket
USC will open its tournament run against Texas A&M Corpus Christi, which went 23-8 and is making its NCAA Tournament debut.
If the Trojans win its opening game, USC will play the winner of No. 8 Kansas (19-12) and No. 9 Michigan (20-13).
USC’s Portland 3 Regional
No. 1 USC
No. 16 Texas A&M Corpus Christi
No. 4 Virginia Tech
No. 13 Marshall
No. 5 Baylor
No. 12 Vanderbilt/Columbia
No. 6 Syracuse
No. 11 Auburn/Arizona
No. 3 UCONN
No. 14 Jackson State
No. 2 Ohio State
No. 15 Maine
Final Four: Friday, April 5 at 7:00 p.m. with the second semifinal starting 30 minutes after the first game ends. Both will be broadcast on ESPN and hosted at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland, Ohio.
NCAA championship game: Sunday, April 7 at 3 p.m. ET on ABC, hosted at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland, Ohio.
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