INDIANAPOLIS — The final regular-season weekend gave basketball fans a potential preview of this week’s Big Ten Tournament.

USC dominated crosstown rival UCLA, completing a season sweep of the Bruins to win the conference title. Maryland, meanwhile, got a 3-pointer with one second left to beat Ohio State.

The result: Each of this week’s top four tournament seeds is ranked in the top 15, each has a double bye into Friday’s quarterfinal round and each has something to prove in Indianapolis.

“A hundred percent. Absolutely, yes,” UCLA coach Cori Close said Saturday night when asked if she would like a rematch. “If you’re a competitor, yes, bring it on. If we don’t, there’s something bigger wrong. If there’s anyone in our locker room (who) would answer differently, don’t come back.”

The fourth-ranked Bruins (27-2) have been flawless against everyone this season — except No. 2 USC, which earned its highest ranking in 39 years Monday thanks largely to JuJu Watkins’ stellar play, including two big games against UCLA.

As a result, the Trojans knocked UCLA out of the No. 1 ranking in mid-February and out of the No. 2 spot this week. And there’s no doubt Watkins & Co. think they can ruin the Burins’ next dream — winning the conference tournament.

But coach Lindsay Gottlieb doesn’t want her team thinking about Sunday’s title game yet.

“You’ve got to be ready on that first day because another team has played,” she said. “Usually the byes help you later in the tournament. We’ve got to be ready to go, but I think we will (be).”

No. 13 Ohio State and No. 15 Maryland certainly understand Gottlieb’s caution.

Over the past decade, one of those two schools has played for the Big Ten Tournament title eight times while winning a combined six titles. Iowa won the other four, the last three with Caitlin Clark in the starring role.

But with Clark now in the WNBA, the Buckeyes and Terrapins enter tournament week seeded third and fourth as they try to make a stand for the Big Ten’s old guard.

“We’ve played pretty well the last three games against really good competition, and I think we’re in a good spot,” Buckeyes coach Kevin McGuff said after Sunday’s road loss. “But we’ve got to take that same competitive character into next weekend.”

The warmup

USC and UCLA finished their earlier Indiana swings with identical 2-0 marks, winning games at two of college basketball’s iconic arenas: Assembly Hall in Bloomington and Mackey Arena in West Lafayette.

The Bruins even took a couple of hours to watch an Indiana Pacers game at the same venue they’ll play in this week.

But their return trip is, thankfully, unlikely to be similar to their first visits. UCLA’s two games were sandwiched around central Indiana’s most severe snowstorm of the season, while USC was around for one of the coldest snaps of the winter.

High temperatures are expected to be in the 40s most of this week with lows in the 30s. Los Angeles will be in the 60s.

Westward-bound

The women’s basketball tournament will be the conference’s 12th postseason championship across all sports in the 2024-25 season. If there is a third round of USC-UCLA for the tournament title, it would give the four first-year Big Ten teams a sixth championship.

Oregon swept the men’s and women’s indoor track and field titles last weekend in Indianapolis and won the football title by beating Penn State just a short walk away from Gainbridge at Lucas Oil Stadium. The Ducks also won the women’s cross country title, while UCLA won the women’s soccer tournament.

The eighth-seeded Ducks (19-10) open play against ninth-seeded Indiana (18-11) on Thursday, and 12th-seeded Washington (18-12) faced 11th-seeded Minnesota (20-10) on Wednesday. USC plays the first game Friday against the Oregon-Indiana winner, while UCLA opens play in Friday’s third game against seventh-seeded Illinois (21-8), 10th-seeded Nebraska (19-10) or 15th-seeded Rutgers (11-18).

Missing out

For the first time, every Big Ten team will not be playing in the tournament. The bottom three teams in the 18-team conference did not qualify.

Who’s out? Penn State (10-19, 1-17), Northwestern (9-18, 2-16) and Purdue (10-19, 3-15), which lost the tiebreaker with Rutgers based on a loss in the teams’ only meeting. The Wildcats forfeited conference games against the Trojans and Bruins when they did not travel to California in January amid wildfire concerns.

While six of the Big Ten regulars, including Northwestern, never have won the tournament title, not having Penn State and Purdue is odd. The Nittany Lions won the first two Big Ten Tournaments while the Boilermakers own a conference-record nine tournament titles.

People watching

Former UCLA star Reggie Miller and his sister, Cheryl, who led USC to two national championships in the 1980s, attended Saturday’s game in Los Angeles, and Reggie Miller has occasionally come back to his NBA stomping grounds, Indiana, to watch games.

Who else could be around?

Clark, who won the tournament’s last three Most Outstanding Player awards. She now calls Indy home, too, because she plays for the Indiana Fever. Iowa retired Clark’s No. 22 jersey earlier this season.