Coming off a triumphant Pac-12 Tournament win in Las Vegas, the Trojans will face Texas A&M Corpus Christi in the second round of the NCAA Tournament March 24.
Sometimes, across the past couple of months, Rayah Marshall and Lindsay Gottlieb would walk into a Pac-12 arena and take a moment to realize just how far they’d come.
Wow, Marshall would think, sometimes discussing with Gottlieb. We got swept here my freshman year.
UCLA. Washington State. Colorado. All swept Marshall and USC, that first year, with Gottlieb at the helm. They were at the bottom of the conference, little progress made on paper away from years of futility.
Two years later, they walked into the Founder’s Club conference room in Galen Center Sunday as the final Pac-12 champions, sitting in front of packed-out tables full of donors, families, alumni and more. And after a banner season – 26-5, 13-5 in the Pac-12, beating Stanford twice – USC was officially tabbed as a No. 1 seed on Selection Sunday in the Portland Regional 3 bracket, set to host Texas A&M Corpus Christi at the Galen Center March 24.
It was an emotional Sunday afternoon, a slew of program alumni grouped around and filming the team, sitting in a row of chairs and fixated intently on a TV screen showing ESPN’s Selection Sunday coverage.
