LOS ANGELES -- Kevin McGuff sat at a podium inside the Galen Center on Saturday night and sighed. The Ohio State women's basketball coach took off his reading glasses after a glimpse at the box score, ran his hands through his hair and tried to make sense of the gauntlet his team had just gone through.
After traveling from Columbus with a nearly flawless 20-1 record, the Buckeyes ran into not just one, but two buzz saws, losing to undefeated No. 1 UCLA and No. 7 USC by a combined 34 points over the span of 72 hours in Los Angeles.
"They're both terrific teams. They're both extremely talented," McGuff said. "They're both deep. They're both well coached."
The way that last year's Big Ten regular-season champion Ohio State emerged from its road trip highlighted a new reality: USC (21-2, 11-1) and UCLA (23-0, 11-0) are the class of the new Big Ten. And while the expectations around the Trojans before this year were skyscraper high, it's the Bruins who have become the sport's unbeatable force.
Separated by a mere 14 miles of L.A. freeway traffic, both programs have risen to the top in different ways. As McGuff explained, UCLA sports a unique player in 6-foot-7 Lauren Betts, who provides perhaps the biggest mismatch in all of women's college basketball, while USC boasts one of the most talented players in JuJu Watkins, who can glide through defenses on her way to scoring at will.
Both USC and UCLA have their eyes set on owning March Madness and potentially becoming the first Big Ten team to win a national title since 1990. For now though, they are set to face off Thursday (10 p.m. ET) in the first of two highly anticipated matchups between them. As Southern California becomes the site of two of the sport's biggest games of the year, fans are ready to flock to arenas to watch Betts, Watkins and their teammates battle for bragging rights, a No. 1 seed and a place atop the conference.
"It'll be interesting when they play each other," McGuff said. "I think the games are going to be very close."
THE BEST TEAM in the country was grinding.
Inside the Mo Ostin Basketball Center on the UCLA campus, head coach Cori Close had her whistle ready and her voice already warm. Her team was going through offensive sets, preparing for the Buckeyes.
"We have to raise our level of toughness!" Close yelled. "Ohio State will force us to raise our level of toughness or we'll lose. What do you want? Choose it!"
Despite being the last unbeaten team in Division I women's or men's college basketball this season, Close would not call this season flawless. Perfection purposefully eludes the way she thinks. There's always something to get better at, always something to fix. The score, the record, is a byproduct of the Bruins' hard work, but it is far from confirmation that they've reached their final form.
"I want them to enjoy it," Close said. "But I asked them, 'How many of you have enjoyed being No. 1?' I said, 'Well, what are you willing to do to protect it?'"
This is, in Close's own words, the most intentional roster build she has had during her time in Westwood. It began with a junior class that features guards Kiki Rice, Gabriela Jaquez and Londynn Jones, who have been preparing for this moment.
"When we were freshmen there were five of us that came in and everyone's like, 'You guys are going to be so good,'" Jaquez said. "At the time we were like, 'Well, we want to be good now. We don't care about the future, we're not there yet.' And I think that it's just been fun to see everyone's growth and how far along we've come."
Adding Betts, a Stanford transfer, two years ago gave the Bruins a sun to revolve their basketball universe around. Getting forward Timea Gardiner from Oregon State and Janiah Barker from Texas A&M in the offseason has been a boon, while having freshman guard Elina Aarnisalo add much-needed outside shooting has been a welcome surprise.
"We were very intentional about building our chemistry on and off the court," Rice said. "We knew we had the talent that we needed. So it was just about putting it together and figuring out how we can gel the best out there on the court."
The result: the best and deepest team in the sport. When teams sell out to stop Betts from the inside out, as Rice pointed out, the Bruins can beat you from the outside in. It all allows for a higher margin of error than in previous years.
"It can be anyone's night at any given game, which is super fun and makes it scary for the other team to try and defend us," Jaquez said.
Buoyed by the culture fostered by the junior class, Close's team seemingly has it all: chemistry, talent and depth. It's why she harps on their drive so much, why she isn't hesitant to call out bad body language in a drill or even take on the role of the bad guy in the face of a season that has yet to feature a loss.
"It's harder," Close said of motivating an undefeated team. "Because my job is to sort of be the jerk and to make it uncomfortable when we are below the standard, even when the score doesn't say it."
"She challenges us," senior forward Angela Dugalic said with a smile. "A lot."
Players welcome it. They know how Close operates and, even if they're brand-new to the team, her approach is part of why they're here. For players like Rice, who have experienced the feeling of coming up short of their goals while wearing blue and gold, there is a particular motivation that welcomes anything from criticism to never being satisfied.
"The lessons that we brought into this year about falling short where we wanted to get instilled that mentality in all of us not to let up," Rice said. "It wasn't until very recently, when we became the only undefeated team left in the country and No. 1, that we realized where we were at."
Close, for her part, admitted the way that last year's final game transpired -- a loss to LSU in the Sweet 16 -- has stuck with her.
"That was one of the most painful losses of my career, top five for sure," Close said. "I was not my best. We didn't play our best when our best was needed. So I had to sit with that pain of regret for a while, and then it became about how do I channel that into being more disciplined and focused on areas of growth that I thought we needed to do to make sure we don't feel that way again."
Close's expectations for this team going into this year were cautiously optimistic, but deep down she knew: If the pieces fit, if the chemistry flourished and if things broke the right way, they had a chance to be special.
ACROSS TOWN A few days later, it was USC's turn to face off with the Buckeyes. The buzzing crowd at the Galen Center was a sign of the times -- women's college basketball has become a must-watch event in L.A. -- and a prelude of what was to come in the most anticipated matchup of the season.
Watkins is at the center of everything the Trojans do. Even when she doesn't handle the ball, she sets the tone on the court, and her magnetism off of it -- when every kid and fan lines up to get something signed from her -- is just as palpable.
"The gravity that she draws opens things up for other people," head coach Lindsay Gottlieb said.
If UCLA's approach with Betts is more procedural, designed to run the offense through her and showcasing its depth based off her double teams, USC's is a more artistic strain of the same idea. Though Gottlieb prioritizes spacing in the Trojans' offense, the attention Watkins commands helps to further open up lanes and windows for her teammates and the much-improved 3-point shooting USC is getting from freshmen such as Kennedy Smith and Avery Howell.
Watkins often holds the paintbrush of nearly every offensive possession, but where last season she needed to create a masterpiece for USC to win, this year, she now has more help. Against the Buckeyes, she needed it. Watkins started the game 0-for-10 from the field and finished 5-of-21.
Though Watkins isn't afraid to shoot through a slump -- and Gottlieb certainly knows that sometimes that's part of the process -- the rest of the Trojans have shown they are capable of picking her up on an off night. Stanford transfer forward Kiki Iriafen had one of the best games of her college career, scoring 24 points and grabbing 13 boards.
"I don't think we were in a position last year where we win games without her scoring as much as she had to score," Gottlieb said after the game. "I think we have nights where there's multiple people really clicking and that feels really good and it's very pretty. That's not the only way you win."
There's no mistaking what USC's offensive identity is. Yes, it can win in different ways, but its ceiling is the highest when Watkins is at her best, like when the Trojans traveled to Connecticut and handed No. 4 UConn its only home loss of the season. Watkins was prolific, scoring 26 points on 16 shots while adding six rebounds and five assists.
The Trojans wouldn't be in this position without Watkins; they also wouldn't be here without their defense, which ranks atop the Big Ten and has held teams to fewer than 70 points in 10 of their 11 conference games. It's that stingy defense featuring the versatile Smith that UCLA, the conference's top offense, will have to overwhelm in order to emerge from the rivalry game with a victory.
"The way in which we play is very different," Close said. "But both teams are so good."
"[UCLA is] a team that clearly has it clicking right now," Gottlieb said. "We know there'll be a lot of pride on the line."
BY THE TIME USC put its finishing touches on its win over Ohio State on Saturday and the celebration began, the PA announcer's call to action for fans to return to Galen in a few days for the matchup against UCLA didn't even need to be said. The fans' preemptive excitement nearly drowned him out. The game has been sold out since late January.
Close marvels at it all. She remembers being in high school and watching how the girls' basketball games were slated for the afternoon and no one came to watch, while the boys' varsity and JV games got primetime placement and a packed crowd.
"Even back then, I was just like, it doesn't have to be that way," Close said. "Our product has been great. So for me to see some of these tipping points happen, whether it be media rights or attendance, it's really gratifying. And I think the best is yet to come."