Cal Heads To USC For Preseason Matchup - California Golden Bears Athletics

The California women's basketball team is heading down to USC for its second of the three exhibition games which will take place at the Galen Center in Los Angeles on Sunday at 2 p.m. PT. The game will be streamed on Big10+.

This marks just the 81st overall meeting between the two programs with USC holding a 45-35 series lead although this is the first time both teams will meet in an exhibition setting. The Golden Bears and Trojans last faced each other on Dec. 21, 2025 at the Invisalign Bay Area Women's Classic at Chase Center in San Francisco.

In that game, the Bears led for a majority of the second half until USC re-took the lead late in the fourth quarter and made it a tight game down the stretch. Down by just two with under a minute left, a Cal turnover allowed USC to hit key free throws to seal the 61-57 win. Lulu Twidale and Taylor Barnes both scored 11 points.

USC is led by sixth-year head coach Lindsay Gottlieb and is coming off a second-round appearance in last year's NCAA Tournament. The Trojans enter the season ranked No. 3 on the AP Preseason Poll and will return Juju Watkins who was named to the AP Preseason All-America Team.

GAME INFORMATION
Date & Time: Sunday, Oct. 25 | 2:00 p.m. PT
Broadcast: Big 10+
Live Stats: Sidearm Stats

The Golden Bears are coming off a season in which they:

Posted their third straight winning season
Won 21+ games for the second straight year
Advanced to the quarterfinal round of the WBIT
Defeated two teams who advanced to the Sweet 16 (Notre Dame and Virginia)

QUICK HITS

Cal returns four of five full-time starters from the 2025-26 team who accounted for 75% of the team's 3-point makes and 58% of its scoring.
The Bears are led by Twidale who was just named to the Preseason All-ACC Team after a season in which she set program records for single-season (101) and career (236) 3-pointers and finished fifth in the NCAA for triples.
Twidale will enter the 2026-27 season ranked second in the country for career 3-pointers among active players.
Gisella Maul is coming off a career year in which she had career season-highs in scoring (9.8), rebounding (6.7), assists (2.3) and double-doubles (5).
The Bears' transfer class includes senior Shannon Dowell (Missouri) who posted two 30+ point and nine 20+ games in 2025-26, junior Albina Syla (Rhode Island) who was named the Atlantic 10 Tournament Most Outstanding Player last year and sophomore Carly Amborn (Stanford) a four-star recruit in high school out of local San Domenico HS in Larkspur, CA.

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