They sat in a line of folding chairs on the Galen Center court, watching the television in front of them intently, waiting as one region after another was announced without them. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the Trojans deserved a No. 1 seed — that box had already been checked through a 29-win regular season and Big Ten regular season title run. But as one top seed was declared, then another, then another, a different feeling crept over the group than the joy that filled the room this time last year.

USC once again earned a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament, this time in Regional Two that runs through Spokane in the Sweet 16 round. The Trojans will host No. 16 seed UNC Greensboro at Galen Center in the first round of the NCAA tournament at noon on Saturday. The game will air on ABC. None of that came as a surprise to anyone on Sunday.

Kennedy Smith was only 14, just a few games into her freshman season at Etiwanda High, when she first crossed paths on the court with Kiki Iriafen, who played at Harvard-Westlake. Four years later, with both at USC, Iriafen still vividly remembers her first impression.

“I did not like her,” Iriafen said, with a laugh. “She was a pest.”

JuJu Watkins winced, shaking her left hand, the collective basketball world holding its breath. The first 10 minutes of USC’s NCAA tournament debut had been disconcerting enough already. Errant passes sailed away. Makeable jumpers clanked away. And No. 16-seed North Carolina Greensboro, having promised to “shock the world,” was at the very least making life difficult on the top-seeded Trojans.

Then, their star sophomore went up for a rebound early in the second quarter and emerged from under the hoop wincing with pain, an image that inevitably conjured thoughts of the worst-case scenario.

Rayah Marshall took her place at the front of USC’s defense Saturday, ready to deploy the role she’d spent the past two years perfecting.

USC had dragged through the first quarter of their first-round matchup, unable to separate from No. 16 North Carolina Greensboro. So a few minutes into the second, with her team in need of a spark, coach Lindsay Gottlieb turned to Marshall, the “Mad Dog” at the front of the Trojans’ vaunted pressure defense.

The Galen Center crowd sat in hushed disbelief, every cardinal-and-gold soul struggling to process a scene that seemed ripped straight from their worst nightmares: USC’s superstar lying crumpled on the court, clutching her right knee, her cries rising to the rafters where she hoped a banner would soon hang.

JuJu Watkins, for the better part of two seasons, seemed nothing short of invincible. The sophomore surpassed every sensible expectation with stunning grace, never wavering even as she bore the weight of an entire program. She already captivated the college basketball world, and in the process, dragged the Trojans back from the depths of obscurity to the doorstep of tournament glory, just a few short steps away from a Final Four.

JuJu Watkins screamed.

She held her right knee with both hands, squeezed her eyes shut and screamed.

SPOKANE, Wash. — The first week after Paige Bueckers tore the anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee in August 2022, the questions haunted the Connecticut star most.

“The first week was devastation,” Bueckers recalled Friday, 2½ years later. “A sense of just hurt, disappointment, a why-me sort of mentality, why now.”

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SPOKANE, Wash. — Thirty six hours after JuJu Watkins’ right knee buckled beneath her and USC’s season changed in the blink of an eye, Lindsay Gottlieb gathered her team for its first practice since its star sophomore went down.

It was a critical moment for USC and its coach. Emotions were still raw. Hearts were still heavy. But while the rest of the basketball world was busy writing off the Trojans, Gottlieb wanted her team to know one thing hadn’t changed in the wake of Watkins’ injury.