Gottlieb’s Trojans Lose to Huskies in Elite Eight

As Lindsay Gottlieb prepared to deliver her opening remarks in the press conference following her team’s 78-64 Elite Eight loss to the UConn Huskies on the evening of March 31, the USC Trojans women’s head basketball coach tried her best to fight back tears. Minutes earlier, Gottlieb had managed to stay dry-eyed while addressing her scrappy, shorthanded team that fell to the eventual national champion Huskies in the fourth round of March Madness for the second consecutive year but couldn’t promise the room full of reporters that she would remain stoic throughout her postgame presser.

Gottlieb, a member of the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame of Northern California and one-time head coach of the Cal Golden Bears and associate coach for the Cleveland Cavaliers, was naturally chock-full of raw emotion. After all, her team, just 48 hours earlier had prevailed over Kansas State, 67-61, in the Sweet 16, a gutsy win largely fueled by the contributions of her star-studded freshman class, and on this evening had battled back from a 14-point halftime deficit to make things interesting in the second half, all without the services of arguably the nation’s best player, sophomore guard JuJu Watkins, who had been felled by a season-ending ACL tear in the first quarter of USC’s second-round blowout win over Mississippi State.

“I was just very proud of the way that we competed tonight,” said Gottlieb, while sitting next to two of her players, graduate student guard Talia Von Oelhoffen and senior forward Rayah Marshall. “I think you saw the heart and character of our team on display. I’m disappointed for them that we don’t get to go to Tampa [site of the Final Four] and get two more games, but I’m not sad with the way this group represented themselves.”

Get The AJT Newsletter by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up

Going into this year’s March Madness, Gottlieb’s Trojans, anchored by Watkins, the eventual recipient of the 2025 Wooden Award given to the most outstanding player in women’s college basketball, were given a fighting chance to avenge last year’s Elite Eight loss by knocking off the mighty Huskies when they crossed paths. But, ultimately, USC, behind its fourth-year head coach who was tabbed a finalist for the 2024 Werner Ladder National Coach of the Year award a year ago, couldn’t compensate for the gaping hole left by Watkins’ absence when going up against the overwhelming juggernaut that is UConn women’s hoops.

I was just very proud of the way that we competed tonight.

“Even though we’ve lost at the same point and stage, I think our team 100 percent delivered on raising that bar and raising that standard,” added Gottlieb, whose squad had actually edged the Huskies, 72-70, during a December tilt. “It took a lot for us internally to get to the point where we were legitimately a national championship contender, a real top five team all year long.”

As she grew up in Scarsdale, N.Y., and later played basketball at Brown University, Gottlieb was never more than a two-hour drive from Storrs, Conn., where the Huskies were emerging into one of college basketball’s most storied dynasties under the tutelage of Geno Auriemma by the mid-90s. During her emotional season-ending press conference, Gottlieb made a point to acknowledge a UConn team, headlined by point guard Paige Bueckers, that would be the last to cut down the nets in April. “As much as this hurts for our kids, how do you not have respect and root for a team that had to figure some things out, too, along the way and has battled injuries?” offered Gottlieb.

Meanwhile for USC, looking forward, the fortunes of the ascending program largely hinge on how quickly Watkins can recover from the devastating ACL tear. There’s no telling if their marquee player will sit out for the entirety of next season or try to return at some point. But, as Gottlieb shared with ESPN the morning after her team bowed out of March Madness, “I have no doubt that her [Watkins] comeback’s going to be legendary, and I have no doubt that the strength of the program is not in doubt, and I think we proved that.”

I think our team 100 percent delivered on raising that bar and raising that standard.

With two straight Elite Eight appearances coming on the heels of a sparkling career at Cal, during which she guided the Golden Bear women to seven NCAA appearances, including a trip to its first and only Final Four in 2013, and a nice run as an assistant for the Cavs (at the time she was hired by Cavs general manager Koby Altman, who also happens to be Jewish, becoming the first women’s collegiate head coach to join an NBA staff), Gottlieb stands to preside over a USC team that will be a perennial national title contender. As for this basketball season, from the perspective of the Jewish community, it was only fitting that a women’s team that went deep into March Madness had strong representation in light of there being three Jewish head coaches (Auburn’s Bruce Pearl, Duke’s Jon Scheyer, Florida’s Todd Golden) partaking in the Men’s Final Four.