USC Women's Basketball: Head Coach Lindsay Gottlieb Added to COTY Watchlist

Another Trojan makes an award watchlist.

USC women's basketball head coach Lindsay Gottlieb was one of 15 coaches to be added to the Naismith Women's College Coach of the Year late season watchlist. 

The Trojans are off to a great start this season, posting a 20-4 overall record and a 10-4 conference record thus far. 

USC currently is on a six-game winning streak that has them looking confident heading into March. They also just moved up three spots in the AP Top 25 poll this week, and now rank at No. 7.

With just four games left in the regular season for USC, the Trojans will already finish with a better regular season record than they did a season ago, when they went 21-10.

Their conference record has also improved significantly. Prior to Gottlieb's arrival in the 2021-2022 season, the Trojans had not posted a winning conference record since the 2013-2024 season. Now, Gottlieb is about to lead the Trojans to back-to-back winning conference records. 

It's no surprise to see Gottlieb succeeding with USC. This is Gottlieb's third women's college basketball head coaching stint, and she's posted a winning record at every stop so far. She's also won Big West Coach of the Year while she was head coach of Santa Barbara, and the Pac-12 Coach of the Year with the Cal Bears. 

Of course, a ton of credit for their success this year belongs to freshman wonder JuJu Watkins. While Gottlieb is certainly providing an environment that has allowed Watkins to succeed, it takes a special kind of athlete like Watkins to see this much success.

Still, the combination of Gottlieb and Watkins has proven incredible for the Trojans. USC is off to their best season in years, and Gottlieb is deservedly on the Coach of the Year watchlist.