It’s finally that time of the year when I can stop writing about USC football. Ahhh, it feels like a relief to stop beating the same dead Trojan horse week in and week out. I worry I’ve started coming off slightly like a pessimist in these columns.

Okay, maybe a lot like a pessimist, but I’m a changed man. I’m turning my negativity and my talk of pigskins in for a shiny new Trojan sport that surely won’t let me down.

USC women’s basketball (4-0) has already been discussed many times in this column. I remember covering them during my sophomore year when the team was just starting to turn things around with Head Coach Lindsay Gottlieb and then-graduate guard Destiny Littleton. That team snuck its way into the NCAA Tournament, and while it was taken out in the first round, it was the initial tremor of the seismic shift that would happen with USC women’s basketball.

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Fast forward two years, and now, instead of writing about how the women’s team is underrated compared to the USC men’s team, I’m writing about how this rendition of Gottlieb’s team might just go and win the whole thing. This Trojan roster is incredibly stacked from the top of the roster to the bottom.

If you’re reading this, you already know how dynamic of a scorer Watkins is, and I don’t need to tell you that.

What’s been encouraging for me in this short sample size early into the season with Watkins is her role as an offensive creator for her teammates. She had a career-high nine assists against Cal State Northridge (2–1) — I’ll talk more about that game in a second — and had zero turnovers. One of the only real problems with Watkins’ game last season was constantly turning the ball over, finishing with the fifth-most turnovers in the country.

Again, while it is a small sample size, Watkins has been taking care of the ball a lot better so far this season. In USC’s last three games, she had two, zero and three turnovers, respectively. It’s just the second time in her career she’s had a three-game stretch with three turnovers or less consecutively. It will be key for the Trojans if she can keep this up consistently throughout the season.

Going back to USC’s record-breaking, 85-point drubbing of the Matadors, the Trojans really put the collegiate basketball world on notice in that game. Beating any team by almost triple digits is incredible in and of itself, but what’s even crazier is the Trojans didn’t even look like the best version of themselves.

They undoubtedly were the better and more talented team, but the energy seemed low at times — understandably so considering the circumstances — yet the Trojans still blew CSUN out of the park.

Much of that has to do with this team’s stellar depth. I mentioned that they were good from top to “bottom,” but there truly is no bottom with this team. USC’s bench unit would be able to qualify for March Madness by themselves. Gottlieb has a lethal backcourt coming off the bench with a superb trio of guards, including freshmen Kayleigh Heckel and Avery Howell and sophomore Malia Samuels.

At the helm of the Trojans, Gottlieb has never had this embarrassment of riches before and can do so many different things with this lineup. And USC will be battle-tested early with marquee games against No. 6 Notre Dame (4-0) and No. 2 UConn (3-0) before the Trojans’ nonconference schedule is over. Even if they split the two games, it tells me everything I need to know about this team.

Things looked a little rocky after a narrow escape in the team’s first game against No.17 Ole Miss (3-1), but USC women’s basketball is coming into its own. The team is scary good and not just one of the two best squads in California, or even just the Big Ten; they’re one of the best in the entire country. Come April, I can’t wait to see them playing in the final game of the season, vying for a championship ring.

Stefano Fendrich is a senior writing about his opinions on some of sports’ biggest debates in his column, “The Great Debate,” which runs every other Thursday. He is also the managing editor at the Daily Trojan.