USC and UCLA have made L.A. the center of women's college basketball - ESPN

LOS ANGELES — Kevin McGuff sat at a podium inside the Galen Center on Saturday night and sighed. The Ohio State women's basketball coach took off his reading glasses after a glimpse at the box score, ran his hands through his hair and tried to make sense of the gauntlet his team had just gone through.

After traveling from Columbus with a nearly flawless 20-1 record, the Buckeyes ran into not just one, but two buzz saws, losing to undefeated No. 1 UCLA and No. 7 USC by a combined 34 points over the span of 72 hours in Los Angeles.

«They're both terrific teams. They're both extremely talented,» McGuff said. «They're both deep. They're both well coached.»

The way that last year's Big Ten regular-season champion Ohio State emerged from its road trip highlighted a new reality: USC (21-2, 11-1) and UCLA (23-0, 11-0) are the class of the new Big Ten. And while the expectations around the Trojans before this year were skyscraper high, it's the Bruins who have become the sport's unbeatable force.

Separated by a mere 14 miles of L.A. freeway traffic, both programs have risen to the top in different ways. As McGuff explained, UCLA sports a unique player in 6-foot-7 Lauren Betts, who provides perhaps the biggest mismatch in all of women's college basketball, while USC boasts one of the most talented players in JuJu Watkins, who can glide through defenses on her way to scoring at will.

Both USC and UCLA have their eyes set on owning March Madness and potentially becoming the first Big Ten team to win a national title since 1999. For now though, they are set to face off Thursday (10 p.m. ET) in the first of two highly anticipated matchups between them. As Southern California becomes the site of two of the sport's biggest games of the