USC women’s basketball, in a few short years under Lindsay Gottlieb, has become what Trojan fans expected USC football to be under Lincoln Riley. USC women’s hoops is flying high after beating NC State, a top-10 opponent, on the road. USC football is about to play the most important games of its season: Iowa, then Oregon, then UCLA. USC women’s basketball keeps proving itself. USC football is about to play its prove-it games in 2025.
USC athletics is currently defined by two dramas moving in different directions. Can football reach the high bar set by women’s basketball? It is a defining question for this school’s national athletic profile.
Lindsay Gottlieb maintains excellence
Lindsay Gottlieb has won a conference tournament championship, a conference regular-season championship, attained two No. 1 seeds in the NCAA Tournament, and reached back-to-back Elite Eights. She has won a Sweet 16 game (2025 Kansas State) without JuJu Watkins. She just beat a top-10 opponent on the road without JuJu. Gottlieb is achieving at a top level even without her foremost superstar player. It’s hard to ask what more Gottlieb needs to prove. She is proving herself nearly every time USC takes the court.
What Lincoln Riley was supposed to be
Lincoln Riley came to USC with the kind of reputation Lindsay Gottlieb has earned and currently owns. Riley was viewed as a can’t-miss hire. The expectation was excellence every time his team took the field. Lindsay Gottlieb has inspired total trust from USC fans with each new and impressive achievement. Gottlieb seems to do something amazing each week, producing accomplishments with assembly-line efficiency. This is what Lincoln Riley was supposed to deliver. In 2022, he did … but the well has run dry since then.
Lindsay Gottlieb’s basketball laboratory
Gottlieb has had to coach very different USC women’s basketball teams. The 2023 team under Destiny Littleton was a bunch of scrappy underdogs. The 2024 team had a freshman version of JuJu Watkins with the Ivies, the transfers from Ivy League schools. The 2025 team had a sophomore iteration of JuJu combined with veteran Rayah Marshall, freshman star Kennedy Smith, high-end transfers Kiki Iriafen and Talia von Oelhoffen, plus freshmen Kayleigh Heckel and Avery Howell. Now, Gottlieb doesn’t have JuJu or Rayah or Clarice Akunwafo. Kiki and TVO are gone, too. It’s a dramatically different team.
Still, USC defends well, fights well, and produces big wins against quality national opposition — on the road, early in the season. Gottlieb is maxing out with what she has. If JuJu had not gotten injured, USC looked like a national championship-caliber team last March. The Trojans gave eventual champion UConn a legitimate battle without JuJu.
Lincoln Riley’s fateful move
Bringing back Alex Grinch for 2023 still lingers as Lincoln Riley’s biggest and most fateful mistake at USC. He is still in some ways trying to dig out of the ditch he created with that one horrendous decision.
The brutal 2024 plot twist
In 2024, Lincoln Riley improved the USC defense by hiring D’Anton Lynn, Eric Henderson, and Doug Belk. He should have done so a year earlier. The painful agony for USC in 2024 is that if the Trojan offense could have played to a 2022 standard, the Trojans would have had a playoff-caliber team. If the 2024 USC defense had been paired with the 2023 offense, USC would have had a playoff-caliber team. Riley has failed to marry his best offense with his best defense, and that is why USC is still searching for the CFP.
Lindsay Gottlieb 2025
Lindsay Gottlieb is stacking No. 1 seeds, conference championships, and Elite Eight appearances. Year after year, she is swinging big and hitting home runs. USC women’s basketball is in a groove. Its coach continues to push the right buttons. Quality results, while not easily attained and certainly not to be taken for granted, have a machine-cranked feel. It’s becoming the expectation for USC women’s hoops to excel, because we see it all the time.
Lincoln Riley 2019
Lindsay Gottlieb in 2025 occupies the space and identity Lincoln Riley had in 2019 at Oklahoma. Go back to 2019. Riley led Oklahoma to a third straight Big 12 championship and College Football Playoff appearance. Jalen Hurts finished second in the Heisman Trophy vote, the fourth straight year that a Riley-coached player finished in the top three of the Heisman vote. Lincoln Riley could not miss in 2019, much as Lindsay Gottlieb can’t miss now.
Lincoln Riley’s prove-it moment
Iowa this week. Oregon next week. UCLA afterward. If Lincoln Riley is going to make the CFP and lift USC to 10-2 — generally the expected standard for this program (double-digit wins, competing for the biggest prizes in college football) — he has to win all three games. If Riley can pull it off, the anger and frustration of the past three years melt away.
If not, Riley enters 2026 at USC on the hot seat, needing to break through or face the wrath of a rightly unhappy fan base.
Lindsay Gottlieb is the home-run hitter right now at USC. We’re all waiting for Lincoln Riley’s Miguel Rojas — or Freddie Freeman, or Will Smith, take your pick — signature moment with the Trojans.
This article originally appeared on Trojans Wire: Lindsay Gottlieb is coaching the way Lincoln Riley did in 2019 — Riley needs to step up
Reporting by Matt Zemek / Trojans Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
