USC and UCLA battle for one big goal as March Madness gets closer

The USC women’s basketball team defeated Arizona State on Friday night, as you probably know by now. Elsewhere in the Pac-12, the outlook improved for the Trojans in their attempt to secure one of several goals for the remainder of the Pac-12 regular season. One such goal relates to UCLA.

Friday night in the Pac-12 provided a number of noteworthy results. Stanford and Colorado won to remain tied for first place. UCLA held off Arizona. Cal defeated injury-hampered Washington State.

The other especially big result in the conference was Oregon State going into Salt Lake City and beating Utah. That result shook up the top half of the 12-team conference. Let’s take a brief look at the top six of the Pac-12 in women’s basketball, going from the sixth-place team to the first-place team:

6 – UTAH (7-5 PAC-12)

Darren Yamashita-USA TODAY Sports

Utah is a really good team, but the brutal Pac-12 has knocked the Utes around. The loss to Oregon State puts the Utes in sixth place in the conference standings. We’ll have more on the Utes in a little bit.

TIE 4 — USC (7-4 PAC-12)

(Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)

Utah’s loss enabled USC to rise above the Utes in the standings. Keep in mind that USC lost to Utah, so the Trojans need to finish ahead of the Utes in order to avoid losing a head-to-head tiebreaker.

TIE 4 — UCLA (7-4 PAC-12)

(Photo by Chris Gardner/Getty Images)

UCLA and USC split the season series with each other. They’re both 7-4 in the Pac-12, half a game ahead of Utah. These teams are tied for fourth place in the conference. If both the Bruins and Trojans remain ahead of Utah, they will battle for a top-four seed in the Pac-12 Tournament. The team which gets a top-four seed receives a first-round bye and a valuable day of rest heading into that tournament. The team with a bye has a much better chance…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/usc-ucla-battle-one-big-035054956.html

Author : Trojans Wire

Publish date : 2024-02-11 03:50:54

Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.