LOS ANGELES — The Pac-12 women’s basketball schedule is a beast, and nobody gets through it unscathed. USC is right in the middle of the fray, and maybe the events of Friday night at Galen Center are an example of why.
The Women of Troy trailed 20-8 after one period, against an Oregon team that clubbed them, 73-45, on New Year’s Day in Eugene and hadn’t lost to USC since January of 2016.
No problem. The Trojans players came to the sideline, looked each other in the eyes, and proceeded to take the fight to the Ducks in a 56-51 victory, a display of resilience and grit that has kept them in the mix in a crazily good conference.
Going into Sunday’s games, Utah and Stanford are the leaders at 11-2, and the Trojans (7-5 in conference, 18-6 overall) have already knocked off Stanford, then No. 2 in the country. Colorado is 10-3 and the Buffaloes were ranked 25th when the Trojans beat them, in Boulder. UCLA and Arizona are 8-5 and both in the Top 25, and USC lost two excruciating games to the Bruins and an even more gut-grinding double-overtime game to the Wildcats last weekend. And at Utah, then No. 9, USC was down 20 with 3:27 left in the third and cut the margin to six with 3:09 left in the game before the Utes pulled away.
The latest ESPN Bracketology projections have eight teams from the Pac-12 in the 68-team women’s NCAA Tournament field, and Stanford and Utah hosting regionals as top-four seeds. But the Trojans will be there, somewhere. And at this rate, they’ll make someone very uncomfortable, maybe multiple someones, because they’ve seen hard and come out the other side.
“Games go down to the wire,” said guard Destiny Littleton, the graduate transfer from South Carolina who has become the leader of this group (and who played all 40 minutes Friday night). “Every single game is a really tough game in the Pac-12. Like our last game was double overtime (an 81-75 loss to Arizona last Sunday). We were dog-tired. We were just trying to make…
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