After a long stay at the Pac-12, the USC Trojans shifted to the Big Ten this year. The move saw four teams in Oregon, UCLA, USC, and Washington make the shift, leading to the conference’s first season with 18 teams. And while the transition had its own excitement for fans, it came with its own challenges.

After Saturday’s 74-61 loss against Notre Dame, the Trojans head coach Lindsay Gottlieb shared what lay ahead for her team as their first year at the loggerheads against the Big Ten teams.

“You know staff has talked about that. Having been in the Pac-12 for so long, you know what people are going to do out of timeouts. You know what they’re going to do when you’re down, when you’re up. You just know the personalities of the coaches better and you played everyone pretty much twice… now we play everyone once except UCLA.”

Giving a stern warning to her locker room, Gottlieb firmly stated, “So we better get ready. Each one’s going to feel like a tournament game.”

The USC joined the Pac 12 in 1922. However, when the conference struggled to land a competitive broadcasting rights deal, analysts suggested money eventually played its role. Last year in the Pac-12, the Trojans played 30 games in the regular season with 12 teams which meant repeated matchups. However, things are different in the Big Ten conference. Now, they will only play each team once, adding unpredictability. Watkins currently averages 22 points with 6.2 rebounds per game but her real test is to come soon.

“We don’t get a dual over and say ‘Oh, we’ll get them back at home, and we’ll watch the scout.’ And we’ll see we need to bring what we’re doing you know in that one opportunity and get ourselves ready. But that’s an interesting unique challenge. I don’t think our players you know when they face up against someone you know at Nebraska or at Michigan State are necessarily looking at someone that they played against since they were in ninth grade. Like we have in the Pac-12. So personnel scouts are a little bit new.”

However, as much as the head coach understands how difficult adjusting to the new conference may be for her team, the same could be for the opponents as well. “It’s new and fresh and at the same time no one’s as familiar with us either, but it’s just something that makes for a unique season in that sense,” Gottlieb added in the postgame press conference.

As of now, the Trojans have plied their trade against 5 teams, none against the Big Ten teams. Despite losing their recent matchup against Notre Dame, they are positioned at the top spot in the conference. USC will be playing its first conference game against the Oregon Ducks on December 7 and it remains to be seen how they will make their debut as a conference team.

Plus, with them joining the Big Ten, the scouts will find it difficult to commit players since they are not accustomed to the athletes at the grassroots level. Meanwhile, the reasons for their transfer are not clear and it only has resulted in speculations and trusting unnamed sources.

Why did the USC Trojans leave Pac-12?

According to a professor of sports management at Syracuse University, Michael Veley’s opinion, “It’s all about money,” and “the student-athletes and the fan bases are the victims of this takeover.” As mentioned, the Pac-12 was finding it difficult to land a broadcasting rights deal that limited the opportunity of players like Watkins to showcase their talent in front of the entire nation.

Meanwhile, emeritus professor of San Deigo University MBA program, Jim Lackritz, condemned the move, enunciating that “it’s dollars, exposure and opportunities. … The ‘haves’ have decided they want to be able to call the shots, and the ‘have-nots’ are going to be left at the altar.”

However, a close source to ESPN revealed that “competitiveness, brand and the overall landscape of the future of the sport have played a bigger role,” in the move with money being the essence of it. “USC and UCLA have to make the decisions to position them best for the long term… The future is so uncertain we need to be operating from a position of strength,” the unnamed source told ESPN.

Meanwhile, Pac-12 revealed that they were “extremely surprised and disappointed” as UCLA and USC left in a statement. Hopefully, Watkins & Co. will be able to overcome the challenges.