I still remember the night of Nov. 7, 2024, vividly.

Nobody expected soccer — which had won its inaugural regular season Big Ten championship without dropping a game and which had its only loss to that point coming against then-No. 1 Stanford — to lose to an unranked Rutgers team. If football wasn’t going to compete for a title, soccer seemed like the next best bet.

From what I remember, the sports editors at the time weren’t planning on running an article that day, hoping to wait until the results of the Big Ten tournament finals were out, already assuming USC would make it there. But that wouldn’t have led to then-Assistant Sports Editor Darrian Merritt frantically writing a brief as I sat across the newsroom, shocked.

Only about a week before, I had columned about the soccer team and was pretty confident in their odds at the time. I imagine Head Coach Jane Alukonis was, too. But that PK loss to Rutgers rattled the Trojans enough that they barely escaped round two of the NCAA tournament in overtime and eventually fell to then-No. 3 Wake Forest in the quarterfinals, again on penalties.

So, in short, while the Rutgers loss didn’t end USC’s season, it was certainly a turning point. Flip it around and take away some of that playoff sparkle, and you’ve got the Trojans’ (7-3-1, 4-2-0 Big Ten) Sept. 28 rematch with Rutgers (3-4-4, 1-4-4 Big Ten), which solidified a mid-season resurgence while also serving as revenge.

Well before I knew USC would go on a rough, near-monthlong 1-3-1 slide that saw them fall from No. 4 to clear off the United Soccer Coaches’ Top 25, I had what would eventually turn into a 2-1 Trojan victory circled on my calendar. It seemed like the team did, too.

“[For] the team, it was personal,” sophomore forward Jaiden Anderson, a returner from last year’s squad, told me after the game. “We had alumni back here who played in that game, and they were like, ‘It’s revenge time.’” 

On top of the inverse result against Rutgers, it has felt like more is new than old for the Trojans in 2025, despite it being their second Big Ten campaign.

Though some of their early-season woes came at the brand-new Rawlinson Stadium, the facility is clearly a step up and incomparable to soccer’s quasi-home over at Dignity Health Sports Park — about 13 miles from University Park Campus. Alukonis told the Daily Trojan in August that Rawlinson is “one of the best stadiums in college soccer,” and the increase in fan engagement is noticeable from the press box and the field.

“You make one good tackle, one good step, one good anything, and you really feel the energy behind it,” Anderson said of playing at Rawlinson. “I’m very grateful.”

Speaking of Anderson, as just a sophomore, she has established herself as an offensive force with the team’s second-most points with 14 after showing promise in limited play time last year. 

But perhaps an even larger breakout star is junior forward Maribel Flores, who leads USC with 6 goals and 15 points after failing to score on the team’s third-most shots last season. Alukonis’ assertion to the Daily Trojan on Saturday that Flores is “good to go,” despite missing most of the last two games, is perhaps all the good news USC needed to kickstart a run.

Both key returners have come up huge in the young Trojans’ active three-game Big Ten win streak as they hope to claw back into playoff contention one game at a time, with just five to play before conference playoffs begin. 

Flores scored two goals to push USC to a win over Michigan (5-6-2, 2-2-2 Big Ten) in Ann Arbor before contributing to early Trojan scores in the next two wins over Maryland (6-7, 2-4 Big Ten) and Rutgers. Then, on Friday, Anderson broke a scoreless tie in the 86th minute to propel the Trojans over Oregon (2-8-3, 0-4-2 Big Ten).

But with about 80% of last year’s offensive production gone — in particular, no more Helena Sampaio sorcery or Maile Hayes magic — and a goalie with a significantly lower save percentage and averaging around 0.5 more goals per game allowed, it’s tough to write off the three losses as flukes. Especially when you look a little deeper.

Losing to No. 3 Stanford (9-1-1, 3-0-1 ACC) on Sept. 4 is fair in itself, but by four goals at home is a bit worrying come November play. A four-goal dismantling in late September from then-unranked Michigan State (6-2-5, 3-0-3 Big Ten) on the road looks less worrying now that the Spartans have cracked the top 18, but a blanked loss to unranked Washington (7-1-5, 4-0-2) and a 0-0 draw to a non-Power-Four University of Portland (5-2-4, 2-0-1 West Coast Conference) put the Trojans’ uphill battle in context.

After the loss to the Huskies, Alukonis told reporters what she thought her squad needed to do: “just continuing to make sure that we understand the expectation in terms of the Trojan spirit and how much we need to fight and battle,” before calling many of the changes needed “simple fixes.”

Now, a few weeks later, winning out or a 4-1 finish with a competitive loss to No. 9 UCLA (8-3-1, 4-1-1 Big Ten) will put the Trojans in a good spot to make a run at the NCAAs; sometimes, a chip on your shoulder is more valuable than anything else. Take a look at this column: My desire to promote myself from a  “wannabe sports writer” to a “sports writer” now sees me writing this past midnight on a Tuesday morning after major thoughts of skipping an edition.

“[I’m] just proud of the team and finding a way,” Alukonis said on Saturday of her team’s approach to the final stretch of the season. “We always say we don’t get too high, and we don’t get too low. We got to stay really steady, especially during conference play, and try to keep getting after some trophies.”

While I think Merritt is DT retired for now, and I still have a lot of belief in this team, my Thursday assistant sports editor, Ana Arriaga, will be prepped and ready come Big Ten play — perhaps a form of reverse psychology or perhaps my lazy plan to get out of writing a brief should my take go awry.

Sean Campbell is a sophomore writing about all facets of USC sports in a voice and reference heavy style in his column “A Wannabe Sports Writer,” which runs every other Wednesday. He is also a sports editor at the Daily Trojan.