Women’s hoops cook, men’s hoops cope

This article was originally written for the Daily Trojan, published Feb. 27, 2026 for its “Sports for Dummies” column.

One team is winning games; the other is winning our sympathy.

By JULIA HO & HEYDY VASQUEZ

USC men’s and women’s basketball have had vastly different 2026 seasons so far. This picture is from a Nov. 28, 2025, women’s basketball game earlier this season. (Braden Dawson / Daily Trojan file photo)

To begin this second edition of “Sports for Dummies,” we would like to sincerely apologize for endorsing the Patriots in our last piece. 

It won’t happen again … until the next time the Pats make the Super Bowl, at which point we’ll have a tasteful disclaimer. Can we separate the art from the artist? The team owner’s … controversies … from the glory of the sport? We’ll workshop it.

Anyway, USC basketball.

This time, we do have the expertise to discuss this topic, as one of us was making 3’s in high school. Trust — we know ball.

Women’s hoops know real ball

The women’s team is currently sitting at 17-11 overall and 9-8 in Big Ten play, hovering in that anxious-yet-optimistic, NCAA-Tournament bubble zone, where every loss feels like fumbling a DILF — or a MILF, we don’t discriminate — and every win feels like divine intervention. 

Exceptionally moggy freshman guard Jazzy Davidson has been putting up, on average, 18.1 points, six rebounds and 4.4 assists per game, on top of strong defensive numbers, leading the Trojans in all major stats. This includes a 32-point performance against then-No. 10 Ohio State (23-6, 12-5), where she went 6-for-9 from 3, which is less a hot streak and more a polite reminder that recruiting actual shooters, foregoing Davidson’s early-season roughness, tends to help teams score. 

Davidson has undergone her own diva midseason glow-up: early season: shots not falling, team struggling, fans presumably Googling “strength of schedule”; midseason: 32-point Ohio State game, efficiency spike in Wisconsin, visible confidence; and now: legitimate offensive engine who bends defenses instead of reacting to them.

We love a diva timeline. We respect a freshman who figures it out in public. 

Even when USC hit that early losing streak, the women still looked like they knew what they were trying to do. The offense, thanks to senior guard Kara Dunn, sophomore guard Kennedy Smith and senior guard Londynn Jones, has fully found its shape and identity. The ball moved. Defensive rotations seemed executed with intention. 

Sadly, though, on Wednesday evening, the Trojans lost to Penn State (11-17, 4-13), 82-85, in a sad, sad flop — a car crash we couldn’t look away from in the hopes that someone, anyone, would take the wheel. USC led by double digits at one point, shot well early and still somehow watched Penn State go nuclear in the second half behind sophomore guard Kiyomi McMiller, who dropped 40 points, went a stunning 7-for-10 from 3, and crossed the career 1,000-point mark, leaving the Trojans far, far behind. 

So, yes, shoutout to McMiller, because “SFD” supports all women, including the ones who ruined our night. She was incredible. It happens … even moggy teams lose. Our team was women with a plan, but Penn State executed its plan better — which is annoying, but respectable. This felt like losing a DILF who wishes you “all the best,” but then you realize their annual salary is north of $300,000 and they’re tenured. It really, really hurts.

Now, all that’s left for the Trojans is to just pointsmaxx the spiritually choppy No. 2 Bruins (27-1, 17-0) this Sunday to lock up the postseason tournament bid!

Meanwhile, the men are experimenting

Women’s basketball — or as we call it here, basketball — has dominated the court. Watching the men play with all their misses feels like when you shoot your shot and get dogged on. 

To be clear, they aren’t bad; they’re just … quite prone to injury. They’re talented. But … 

Let’s take a look at their standing this year. Currently, they are 11th in the Big Ten and have an 18-10 record overall — whatever that means. We may have won the big game against UCLA for football, but Tuesday’s game against the University of Class-Less Airheads, we lost. Bad. Way to go, boys! 

Anyway … who even cares about men’s basketball — unless they’re playing UCLA. If “SFD” supported President Donald Trump, we’d tell him, “Give the girls the invite, and give the guys the whiteboard!” But we don’t, and could never, so.

Historically, the women have made real postseason waves — Sweet Sixteen runs, a national title appearance with currently injured junior guard JuJu Watkins — while the men have hovered around the bubble, making tournaments, missing tournaments, just narrowly edging Selection Sunday. 

Maybe it’s unfair to say women’s hoops will always be better than men’s, especially since both teams are fighting to stay afloat in the rankings. 

But right now, at USC, one team looks like it’s running an offense it has practiced, and the other looks like it’s discovering the play call in real time. If the teams’ situations could be likened to the Arizona State University incident, the men are giving … Clavicular … and the women are serving the ASU frat leader frame mogger. 

Until further notice, we know which one we’re watching.

Julia Ho is a junior and an associate managing editor at the Daily Trojan. Heydy Vasquez is a senior and an Opinion editor at DT. Together, they write about sports for newcomers and skeptics alike in their column, “Sports for Dummies,” which runs every other Friday.