USC hopes to learn from ’embarrassing,’ most lopsided loss under coach Lindsey Gottlieb

Lindsay Gottlieb wanted her USC team to be tested by the best. That’s why she put together one of the most grueling schedules in all of college basketball, with four games against teams ranked in the top four.

With three of those tests completed, the results haven’t been what she or any of the Trojans hoped for.

USC lost by 17 to No. 2 South Carolina and 28 to No. 1 Connecticut. But neither of those losses was as demoralizing as Saturday night’s setback, as No. 4 UCLA took No. 17 USC to the woodshed in an 80-46 loss that would go down as the largest margin of defeat in Gottlieb’s tenure with the Trojans.

“We got it handed to us,” Gottlieb said. “We can be honest and say this is an embarrassing loss.”

That might be understating it. USC was outshot 53% to 27% by its rival, outrebounded 46 to 26 and outworked in pretty much every sense of the word. The offense was out of sorts. The defense was disastrous, with UCLA regularly blowing past USC in the post on its way to 46 points in the paint.

It was an eye-opening collapse from a team that came into the season still clinging to national title aspirations. To a frustrated Gottlieb it was “a hard lesson that’s painful and not fun” — but one USC (10-4, 2-1 Big Ten) perhaps needed to learn to take the next step.

“I’ve seen right now in three games that we’re not as competitive as we wanted to be with the top five teams in the country,” Gottlieb said. “But I’m not sorry we have them on our schedule. We’re not trying to be a top-25 or top-15 team. We’re trying to be the national champions. We’re trying to be the best program in the country.”

Whether that’s possible this season, without injured star JuJu Watkins, was in serious doubt after Saturday night.

In the frontcourt, the Trojans are especially vulnerable. Never was that more clear than in watching UCLA center Lauren Betts dominate whomever was in her path Saturday. She finished with 18 points and 12 rebounds, four on offense, simply by overpowering the Trojans.

Last season USC had veteran bigs in Kiki Iriafen and Rayah Marshall to rely on against Betts and Co. On Saturday, USC forwards Gerda Raulusaityte, Yakiya Milton, Dayana Mendes, Vivian Iwuchukwu and Laura Williams finished a combined one for 13 from the field.

USC guard Londynn Jones tries to dive past UCLA forward Gabriela Jaquez at Pauley Pavilion on Saturday.

(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)

While USC has managed to get by without much from its frontcourt before, UCLA exploited that weakness from the start. The Trojans were five for 24 inside the arc through one half, left to rely instead on their long-range shooting, which mostly has been hit or miss.

That was enough to keep up for one quarter, as USC hit its first four three-point attempts to offset its issues inside. Kara Dunn hit a three in the second quarter and then assisted on one by Jazzy Davidson, and with five minutes left in the half, the Trojans were down by just one.

But from that point those shots stopped falling. UCLA fired off a 14-0 run as USC went scoreless for five minutes. The Trojans never recovered.

Dunn finished with a team-high 11 points. Davidson, the Trojans’ top scorer this season, had 10.

“We want to be as good as we can be, but I think you learn harder lessons when you don’t play as well as you can or we’re undisciplined or we aren’t as focused as we need to be,” Gottlieb said. “Maybe there’s teams we can win against that way, but the ones that punish you when you do it will make you better, and that’s ultimately the lesson.”