A lot had been heaped on JuJu Watkins from the beginning — from the second she set foot on USC’s campus, she was the one who would convey this system again to the mountaintop. This season, she was the participant who would carry the star energy in girls’s school basketball within the wake of Caitlin Clark.
It was quite a lot of weight on anybody’s shoulders, however she dealt with it nicely. She thrived underneath that duty and blossomed within the highlight.
However final weekend, the most important star in women’s college basketball was carried away after collapsing to the courtroom with a season-ending ACL tear. Her absence has left USC followers surprised and the ladies’s school basketball world stressed.
Some type phrases for JuJu Watkins 🥹 pic.twitter.com/8syMkUOUCu
— espnW (@espnW) March 25, 2025
Salt within the wound? Commercials that includes Watkins will proceed enjoying throughout the NCAA Match. She’s the most important particular person star in girls’s school hoops proper now, drawing red-carpet-like turnout from celebrities at her video games within the Galen Middle. That reception would have boomed with a Remaining 4 journey or nationwide championship as an simple Hollywood storyline.
Whereas prayers rained on Los Angeles for Watkins’ restoration, questions bubbled up: What now? Who now?
It’s a good query. And it echoes the chorus girls’s basketball was requested repeatedly after final season, when Clark departed for the WNBA. Would her legions of followers and tens of millions of viewers who set data watching her play for Iowa stick round for the 2024-25 school season?
No one anticipated this season’s event to match the record-setting viewership of final season, however progress can’t be measured simply in year-to-year good points. And whereas nobody anticipated the numbers to fairly attain the fever pitch of Clark Mania a season in the past, the development continues in a single route: upward.
The primary two rounds of the event featured no Cinderellas, no main upsets, no Clark. They have been gentle on the dramatics that some imagine essential to draw viewers. And but, the numbers don’t lie — rankings from the primary two rounds ranked second finest in event historical past, coming in at 43 p.c greater than in 2023, which now stands because the third-best yr in event historical past viewership.
As generational as Clark was, the sport has nonetheless proven momentum in her wake. With Watkins absent over the remainder of this event, as massive as that may loom, there’s no motive to assume the game isn’t robust sufficient to proceed.
As a result of this query isn’t new.
Many neglect that earlier than Clark captivated the nation, Paige Bueckers was doing the identical. A UConn star as a freshman, she gained the nationwide Participant of the Yr in 2021 and have become an early darling of the title, picture and likeness period. Then, she tore her ACL and missed a whole season, leaving questions on how the game would endure with out its new prodigy who stuffed arenas.
It was in Bueckers’ absence that Clark and Angel Reese emerged, overflowing that void to convey much more curiosity to the sport and push the game to greater horizons, culminating in one in all event historical past’s most epic showdowns. Final season, South Carolina’s undefeated marketing campaign was led by coach Daybreak Staley, who’s amongst sports activities’ most influential figures. The Gamecocks have been examined by Clark’s dazzling shows, drawing viewership rankings that dwarfed even 2023’s excessive requirements.
When Bueckers was out, Clark and Reese answered. Bueckers had accomplished the identical after Oregon’s Sabrina Ionescu went to the WNBA. And followers have been equally skeptical a couple of lack of star energy when Maya Moore graduated from UConn.
The ladies’s sport has proved again and again — particularly in these previous few seasons — that it’ll produce. Luminaries will emerge and captivate basketball followers.
Maybe the reply is just not as apparent because it was per week in the past, when the nation’s finest participant was main a resurgent program with a nationwide following and on the spot recognition on a must-see journey.
Just like the reactions Clark, Moore and others earlier than them impressed, coaches have been concurrently vexed attempting to cease them however appreciative to what they did for the sport. Generally, it’s simpler to see the expansion from inside.
If there’s a coach who can attest to the worth of gamers akin to Watkins and their impression on the game, it’s UConn’s Geno Auriemma. He has seen extra phenoms up shut than anybody else, many who grew to become so beloved they could possibly be referenced by their first names (or initials) alone: Sue, Dee, Maya, Stewie.
When the ESPN broadcast wrapped its protection Monday from UConn’s second-round win after Bueckers scored 34 factors, Auriemma sat courtside in Storrs for an interview. He was requested to reply rapidly so the published may flip to the USC-Mississippi State sport beginning on the West Coast.
“Oh, man, get off me proper now, let’s get to her. I need to watch her play,” Auriemma stated with a smile. “Right here comes JuJu. Give me some JuJu! … Over to you, JuJu, take over!”
Geno counting down the published after which tossing it to JuJu telling her to “takeover” >>>> https://t.co/ErmNJNrp5d pic.twitter.com/A2stO3eH2A
— Tyler DeLuca (@TylerDeLuca) March 25, 2025
Coaches respect nice gamers; sport respects sport. (If solely the latter had some mercy for knees.)
So what subsequent? Who now?
That’s what the subsequent two weeks will resolve. But when the previous tells us something, it’s that the ladies’s event will ship. Probably the most elite expertise remains to be within the sport. Each No. 1 seed (UCLA, South Carolina, USC and Texas), 2 seed (UConn, NC State, Duke and TCU) and three seed (Notre Dame, LSU, North Carolina and Oklahoma) is left standing. The highlight is educated again on Bueckers, and as earlier tournaments have taught us, even informal viewers will turn into new followers of the sport’s finest gamers. Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo, LSU’s Flau’Jae Johnson and UCLA’s Lauren Betts have been exemplary all season, and new younger gamers are poised to shock us.
In Spokane and Birmingham, the present goes on. Nets can be minimize. New stars can be made and topped, and extra acquainted stars will shoulder a heavier load.
A Watkins-less USC is just not the identical because it as soon as was, neither is a Watkins-less event. However the most effective testomony to Watkins’ greatness and star energy is that even in her absence, the game she’s serving to to construct will proceed to develop.
(Photograph: Justin Casterline / Getty Pictures)
