Attending a WSU women’s basketball news conference or practice this week was paradoxical. The mentalities and efforts of both coaches and players do not reflect those of a team riding a six-game conference losing streak in the slightest.

With the temperature expected to hover around the high 80s this weekend in Los Angeles, the Cougs (12-11, 3-8 Pac-12) have another opportunity boiling in front of them to re-enter the win column with rematches against two of the Pac-12’s better teams in No. 14 UCLA and USC, Friday and Sunday, respectively.

After a clunker of a performance in an uncharacteristic 73-48 home loss Friday to an inferno of an Oregon Ducks team that has won six of its last seven, WSU responded two days later by playing the ninth-ranked Oregon State Beavers even for 37 minutes before dropping a tight game, 54-45.

Following WSU Head Coach June Daugherty’s decision to shake up the starting lineup against the Beavs in hopes of getting off to a better start, all 14 players rallied behind one another to put together a stellar defensive outing, forcing 17 OSU turnovers, a performance that will need to be replicated in Southern California.

“We have to find ways to have better starts,” Daugherty said. “It seems that we come out and we get stops defensively, and we’re not converting. We’ve got to do a better job of converting those early stops, those early steals and rebounds.”

Last time against the Bruins (17-6, 9-3) on Jan. 17 in Pullman, the Cougs rallied twice to bring the contest back to a one possession game from an eight-point halftime deficit in the third quarter, and later an 11-point margin in the four,th to get off two shots to tie or win the ballgame in the final three seconds of action.

Both jumpers from WSU freshman forward and leading scorer Borislava Hristova rimmed in-and-out to seal a 75-73 victory for UCLA in a game the Cougs easily could have secured if it were not for the transition baskets it gave up in the first half on defense.

The Bruins boast one of the conference’s premier posts in 6-4 sophomore forward Monique Billings, who tied Hristova for a game-high 19 points in the team’s first meeting. They also run a high-powered offense that averages a conference-best 76.4 points per game and is complimented by a pair of potent guards in senior Nirra Fields (16.3 ppg) and sophomore guard Jordin Canada (16.1 ppg).

“They have seven or eight kids that are McDonald’s All-Americans, play for their national teams whether it’s Canada or USA,” Daugherty said. “So they’re a very high-potent offensive team.”

To knock off the conference’s third-place team in their own house, it is going to require WSU duplicating the second-half effort from the team’s first game into a 40 minute circuit.

After the Cougs’ Friday night stay in Pasadena wraps up, they will head downtown to face a Trojans (17-7, 5-7) squad that represents the Cougars’ last Pac-12 win. That was on Jan. 15 in Pullman.

Like many of the Cougs’ Pac-12 outings this season, the team trailed by double digits in the second quarter against USC the first time they met, and went into halftime trailing 38-31. A rekindled energy level on defense fueled a 23-6 Cougar run to open up the third frame and pace a second half in which WSU outscored the Trojans 42-23 en route to a 73-61 victory.

“We definitely know that we can beat them along with everybody in the Pac,” senior guard Taylor Edmondson said. “But our biggest thing is that we need to get better as a team. We’re not going to focus on them right now but we know that we can beat them and vice versa. So they’ve gotten better too but so have we.”

The Trojans have endured an up-and-down conference slate, similar to that of the Cougs’ after starting the year with 12-straight nonconference wins, but have since lost five of their last eight. Hybrid down low with athletes who will test WSU’s defensive endurance again, Assistant Coach Rod Jensen will again need to switch up his formations, which led the Cougs to some success against OSU.

“I think that’s a big part of it,” freshman guard Alexys Swedlund said of the Los Angeles schools offensive potency putting more pressure on WSU to score. “But the other thing is that if (we) can’t score, our defense should be so good that even if we’re not hitting our shots, the game should still be even.”

Desperate to stay relevant in the eyes of postseason tournament selection committees, a series sweep will likely prove detrimental to the Cougs’ résumé. With each loss now, the margin for error shrinks, making this weekend’s games even more impactful than they already were.

WSU will tipoff against the Bruins at 7 p.m. Friday at Pauley Pavilion and square off with the Trojans at 4 p.m. Sunday at the Galen Center. The Pac-12 Networks will broadcast both games.