After suffering heinous back-to-back losses to No. 5 UC Berkeley and No. 3 Stanford a week ago, No. 11 USC women’s swim and dive entered Friday’s meet looking for a win. Their signature strokes were failing them, their records were suffering and their finishes were always second-best, or worse.

But finally, the Trojans’ luck changed, and in the most crucial of times and places: against crosstown rival UCLA (2-4-1, 1-1-0 Big Ten) in their final meet of the regular season. In spite of the constant smack talk from the vehement blue-and-gold supporters in the stands of Spieker Aquatics Center, USC (7-3, 1-1) was able to take its 34-17-1 record against UCLA up a notch with a 174-126 final score.

This win was partly thanks to one of the diving team’s best performances in a dual meet this season, even without a platform event contributing to the final score. Sophomore Kate Miller swept both the 1-meter and 3-meter board events, earning almost 45 more points ahead of runner-up sophomore Alena Lotterer in the 1-meter. Lotterer also placed fourth in the 3-meter, behind graduate student Jenna Jagielski’s second place.

Nevertheless, the swimmers let their freestyle do the loudest talking against the Bruins in the short-course pool. Freshman Alisee Pisane quickly took the 1000 freestyle for herself, nabbing the fastest split after 50 yards and never looking back for a sub-9:50 finish. Though senior Claire Tuggle later won the 500 free, Pisane kept third place from falling into Bruin hands.

Tuggle herself played second fiddle to graduate student Nicole Maier, one of the stars of the meet, for a Trojan one-two punch in the 200 free. While USC dropped the ball in the 50 free, with only Maier making it to the top four in second place, she bounced back for another win in the 100 free as the only Trojan in the top three.

Breaststroke and butterfly were a little less spotless, but the women fought hard for the placements they earned. Though freshman Sage Miller was the only Trojan to break the top three in the 100 butterfly, earning second place, the 200 fly was USC’s best event of the day. In a 1-2-3-4 sweep, senior Justina Kozan, Miller, senior Ella Flowers and sophomore Camden Doane staged a complete shutout against the Bruins.

For the breaststroke events, however, there was really only one true star of the show. Despite it not being one of her main strokes, senior Ashley McMillan cleared the top of the podium for herself in both the 100 and 200 breaststroke. McMillan fought tooth and nail for her win in the 100, outtouching Bruin junior Sarah Bennetts by a mere 0.2 seconds — and when they faced off again in the 200, she stood her ground to finish almost a full second faster than the Bruin’s final time, qualifying for NCAA Championships with a time of 2:09.11. Freshman Bella Brito added a third-place finish in the 100 and contributed in both relays.

And yet, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows for the Trojans — and they would know, because the worst of USC’s performance happened facing the sky. Backstroke marked a major chink in the Trojans’ armor; any time it showed up in the meet, with the exception of the 200 individual medley, it spelled disaster for USC. 

Trojans occupied all but one of the bottom slots in the 100 backstroke, with only a single Bruin to keep them company, while the top three remained Westwood locals. They fared slightly better in the 200 back, fighting to fill places second through fifth while UCLA senior Rosie Murphy watched them finish from the wall, around three and a half seconds faster than second place.

While the 200 medley relay wasn’t as rough as the 400 medley relay against Cal on Jan. 16 — in which the A-team was disqualified — second, fourth and fifth place didn’t move the needle much in the composition of the meet’s score.

In the end, it all came down to the penultimate event — the 200 IM. Luckily for the Trojans, Kozan barred a Bruin win from Murphy by making up for her comparatively slower backstroke split with killer breaststroke and freestyle legs.

After Kozan’s individual win, the score was high enough that the Trojan A-team placing second in the final event of the day didn’t change the fact that they pulled out a win against the Bruins on their home turf. 

The Trojans will look to carry their momentum forward beyond the bounds of their rivalry as they face the Big Ten Conference Championships on Feb. 18 to 21 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.