This post was updated Feb. 14 at 1:29 a.m.

Rosters shift, playbooks evolve, calendars shuffle, conferences realign and leaders rotate through every offseason. 

But some scripts don’t get rewritten. 

Thursday night trapped the Bruins in their own rerun – a nightmarish one – allowing their fiercest rival to undo their once-perfect season.  

For the second consecutive season, the Trojans stopped the Bruins in their tracks. And this time was just as painful – the Bruins once again didn’t have a dent in their season’s slate heading into the Galen Center on Thursday night. No. 6 USC women’s basketball (22-2, 12-1 Big Ten) unraveled No. 1 UCLA’s (23-1, 11-1) perfect season with a 71-60 victory – crushing the Bruins’ title as the only undefeated team in NCAA Division I basketball.

“Losses painfully teach us where we have lacked and where we got our butts beat, and no one likes to do that,” said coach Cori Close. “We got out-toughed in the fourth quarter, and we’re going to have to learn from that.”

The Trojan crowd – booming beneath a canopy of gold and cardinal – wasted no time letting the Bruins know whose home court they were on. Boos for the Bruins and chants for the Trojans thundered through Galen Center from as early as warmups. 

The nation’s No. 1 team faltered in the first quarter, accumulating a double-digit deficit for the first time this season. The Trojan’s lead was spurred by a 3:42 run, where USC put up 14 points compared to UCLA’s two. With 90 seconds left on the clock, graduate student forward Angela Dugalić ended the Trojans’ run with the Bruins’ first 3-pointer of the night.

Guard Talia von Oelhoffen put the final touch on the Trojans’ dominant opening quarter. Forward Kiki Iriafen set a pick for von Oelhoffen at the elbow – allowing von Oelhoffen to curl off the screen, take a single dribble and launch a desperation heave at the buzzer. 

It fell. And the Trojans jogged back to their bench with a nine-point lead over their foes across town.

But the Bruins wouldn’t throw in the towel just yet. A 13-4 run, completed with a jumper from junior guard Kiki Rice, tied the game with one minute remaining in the half. 

The even scoreboard did not last long, though. USC standout guard JuJu Watkins sank her sixth 3-pointer of the game to keep the Trojans’ lead – a sequence that became ever common through the night. 

“Good players make good plays, and she made a lot of good plays tonight and hit a lot of good shots,” Rice said. 

Watkins is regularly hailed as one of the top players in women’s college basketball history. Thursday night was a reminder of why. 

While Watkins had 25 points to her name heading into the locker room, no Bruin reached double figures in points. Rice and junior center Lauren Betts accounted for half of UCLA’s 35 first-half points, logging eight and nine, respectively. 

“I got to be better, period,” Betts said. “Towards the end, I was just forcing a lot of tough shots.”

Betts led the Bruins to a 10-point run in the third quarter to give her team a glimpse of hope. The Bruins maintained the lead until Watkins – who recorded 38 total points – snatched it right back with six minutes left in the game.

Living up to her title as the Big Ten’s leading scorer, Watkins never allowed the Bruins too much comfort, as both USC and UCLA clawed back from more than 10-point deficits to switch the lead throughout the match. 

“JuJu got really hot from three. She made more 3s in the first half than she’s made in the last five weeks,” Close said. “When we didn’t get rebounds and didn’t get quality shots, then they started getting out in transition and then it was hard for us to set our defense.”

The margin did not exceed three points for the majority of the fourth quarter. But when forward Kiki Iriafen drained a fastbreak layup with 3:34 remaining, the Trojans grabbed a five-point lead. And the Bruins just could not catch up.

The fourth quarter sank all Bruin hopes of remaining undefeated, as the Trojans put up 24 points to UCLA’s eight. Watkins single-handedly equaled the Bruins’ fourth quarter points, including a perfect 4-for-4 from the free throw line.

“There’s no time to be in the pity pond,” Close said. “You can swish your feet in the pity pond but no swimming laps. And there’s no time for us to swim laps.”