LAS VEGAS -- USC freshman phenom JuJu Watkins made history five weeks ago when she scored a school record 51 points against Stanford in a 67-58 victory at Maples Pavilion.
In Sunday's Pac-12 tournament final at MGM Grand Garden Arena, Stanford threw the kitchen sink at Watkins defensively. Watkins had the worst shooting performance of her first season, going 2-for-15 from the field while also committing six turnovers. But instead of crumbling, USC proved what coach Lindsay Gottlieb has been saying all along: The Trojans are a true team.
Behind a game high 26 points from McKenzie Forbes, No. 2 seed USC took home its first Pac-12 tournament title since 2014 (and second overall) with a 74-61 victory over the No. 1 seed Stanford.
The win -- in the Pac-12's final game with the conference set to dismantle this summer -- is likely to catapult USC to a No. 1 seed in the upcoming NCAA tournament, something that hasn't happened for the program since 1986, when all-time legend Cheryl Miller was a senior and a year before the Pac-10 started sponsoring women's basketball.
The championship and potential seeding are only the latest in a litany of callbacks USC has had to its glory days of the 1980s and 1990s, reaffirming that the once-great Trojans are back, the program revitalized behind this generation's Women of Troy.
"We stand on the shoulders of giants," Forbes told ESPN after the game. "The people who came before us -- Cheryl, Lisa [Leslie], Tina [Thompson]. ... They've been supporting us all season. This is for you guys."
This USC team burst onto the national scene on the first day of the 2023-24 campaign in Las Vegas with an upset over top-10 Ohio State. It now leaves Sin City and heads to the Big Dance for the second consecutive season following an eight-year hiatus -- and with its sights set on making more history along the way.
"When the confetti was falling, I said to [Gottlieb], I was like, 'Am I dreaming?'" said Forbes, who broke down in tears moments earlier when she was announced as the tournament Most Outstanding Player.
USC's resurgence wasn't necessarily expected to happen this quickly, something Watkins herself admitted Friday. The Trojans were picked to finish sixth in the conference preseason poll. Watkins, the nation's second-leading scorer with 27.0 points per game, wasn't even selected for the preseason all-conference team.
But with the star freshman leading the way, USC (26-5) tied for second in the Pac-12 and rose to No. 5 in the national rankings in the latest Associated Press poll. And following conference tournament wins over No. 7 seed Arizona, No. 3 UCLA and now 15-time tournament champion Stanford, Gottlieb earns her first piece of hardware since leaving her job as an assistant coach with the Cleveland Cavaliers in May 2021 to take over the helm of a then-dead program.
"Best day ever," Gottlieb said to begin her news conference.
Flanked on either side of her were the unheralded players that stepped up when the Trojans needed it.
To her right, junior Rayah Marshall finished with a 10-point, 18-rebound double-double and nearly collected as many offensive boards (five) as the entire Stanford team (six).
To her left, graduate students Forbes and Kayla Padilla, Ivy League transfers from Harvard and Penn, respectively, with the former scoring 26 points and the latter chipping in 13 while holding Stanford sharpshooter Hannah Jump to just three defensively.
Gottlieb wasn't sure if her team would have won this sort of game six weeks ago, but its growth together and buy-in to her vision -- Watkins as the centerpiece but everyone else excelling in their roles around her -- made a performance like Sunday's possible.
"We don't win a championship today without being able to rely on everything that is truly our team," Gottlieb said.
The defense Stanford threw at Watkins was something Gottlieb said she'd never seen. The No. 1 recruit in 2023, who was playing on an ankle injury suffered in the semifinal round, didn't convert her first field goal until midway through the third quarter. She finished with nine points, the first time she was held to single digits in scoring this season.
But USC led for over 34 minutes of the contest, and in the second half, the Cardinal never got within eight points. Senior Kayla Williams added eight points off the bench, and in all, non-Watkins USC players scored 65 of the team's 74 points in the final (88%), the highest percentage in a game Watkins played this season. In their first meeting against Stanford, non-Watkins players scored 16 of the Trojans' 67 points (24%), their lowest percentage this season.
"There was not one, not two, not three, not four, but five people around [Watkins] because of the respect they have for her and we found a way," Gottlieb said, "because we know that we're a true team."
The Trojans' effort on the glass helped establish their dominance. They outrebounded the Cardinal 48-28, marking only the fifth time in the past 25 seasons, and the first since 2018, that Stanford was outrebounded by 20-plus in a game. Columbia transfer Kaitlyn Davis played a part in that with seven boards, including five on the offensive end.
Stanford bettered USC in terms of shooting percentage (42.4% versus 39.7%), but its rebounding and turnover issues (the Trojans scored 21 points off 11 Cardinal turnovers) spelled trouble. While Elena Bosgana played great defense on Watkins and contributed nine points, no other Stanford player outside of her, Cameron Brink (19 points) and Kiki Iriafen (18 points) scored more than four.
"I think that we have to execute offensively better," Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer said. "We didn't always get the shots that we wanted, and just more than anything, probably have to rebound better."
Stanford, the Pac-12 regular-season champion, is still projected to be a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament. UCLA and Oregon State are also likely to host early-round NCAA tournament games as the league hopes to be well represented at the Final Four in its last year as we know it.
"I'm going to root for all the Pac-12 schools to do really well in the tournament, and I will take some pride in how well they do," said VanDerveer, the sport's all-time winningest coach and the conference's standard-bearer.
Added Gottlieb: "The conference has just been an unbelievable platform for female athletes, a really special conference in terms of the values and what these schools represent. There's obviously some sadness in terms of this being the last one. At the same time, a lot of pride in us winning the last one as a group. This group will be remembered forever for that."