No, USC fans should not be upset that their women’s basketball team sits at No. 4 in the Associated Press Top 25 Poll this week.

The Trojans (23-2, 13-1 Big Ten) did just beat the then-No. 1 team in the country, UCLA (24-1, 12-1), who dropped to the No. 3 spot in the AP poll. There is a logjam at the top, with five of the top seven teams having fewer than two losses and all seven having three or fewer.

As such, there really is not much to separate all of these teams, and the AP voters have little information to differentiate the top teams’ rankings. No. 1 Notre Dame (23-2, 14-0 ACC) beat USC in November, USC beat UCLA last week, UCLA beat No. 6 South Carolina (23-3, 11-1 SEC) in November, South Carolina and No. 2 Texas (26-2, 12-1 SEC) have traded losses and Texas beat No. 7 LSU (25-2, 10-2 SEC) this past weekend.

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While the No. 5 University of Connecticut Huskies (24-3, 14-0 Big East) cannot easily be slotted into making the full cycle of losing — although the Huskies have lost to USC and Notre Dame while beating South Carolina this past Sunday — the point still stands that many of the top-ranked teams have beaten some of the other top-ranked teams, while also falling to others at various points throughout the long, arduous season. 

USC has an argument to be the No. 1 team in the country, but frankly, so does every other top-seven team. The season has hit crunch time — the Trojans only have three regular-season games left before the postseason — but the rankings really do not matter much at this point.

Conference tournaments are upcoming for every school, allowing the NCAA Tournament selection committee to sift through the muck that is the regular season. Seeding is important for the Big Dance — it allows for an easier schedule up until the Elite Eight round — but this season of college basketball has shown that anyone can beat anyone.

Let’s say USC earns a No. 2 and then has to play a No. 3 seed in the Sweet 16 round rather than playing the No. 4 seed if it had earned the No. 1 seed. The Trojans have shown their ability to play top teams, so it should not matter who they play when they play them.

Clearly, earning the No. 1 seed makes life easier, but not a guarantee. That was on display last season when the Trojans earned the top seed in their region before falling to the No. 3-seeded Huskies in the Elite Eight.

The difference this season, however, is the amount of tournament experience this squad has. Sophomore guard JuJu Watkins and senior center Rayah Marshall were both on that Trojan team. Graduate forward Kiki Iriafen and graduate guard Talia von Oelhoffen both made it to the Sweet 16 with their old teams last season. That quartet of Trojans have combined to play in eight NCAA Tournaments, showing how much experience USC has compared to last season’s squad.

UConn’s victory over USC last season was in part because of its level of experience between current redshirt senior guard Paige Bueckers and now,  Washington Mystics forward Aaliyah Edwards. While USC’s experience doesn’t match UConn’s from last year — the four Trojans with major tournament experience were not on the same team for most of their collegiate careers —  the Trojans still have players to rely on down the stretch.

It might seem a little unfair that USC beat the No. 1 team in the country and only moved up two spots, but it’s almost just unfair that UCLA only has one loss, a rivalry defeat to a top-10 team on the road and sits at No. 3 behind two teams with more losses.

The AP poll is subjective, just as the NCAA Tournament seeding will be subjective. So fans can be mad about a subjective ranking; that’s their right as fans. But the right team will find a way to win, no matter where they lie on a subjective scale.

Come March, anything can happen. Even with how dominant UCLA looked in the early part of the season, USC shows that the Bruins are not unbeatable. Anyone will have a chance to win the Big Dance; that’s why it’s the madness of March.

So rather than argue about the rankings, fans should hope their teams get weird, create madness, take care of business and go out and win a national championship.

Thomas Johnson is a senior writing about USC’s arrival to a new conference and all of the implications surrounding the entrance in his column, “Big Ten Bites,” which runs every other Wednesday.