LOSING JUJU WATKINS IS A WICKED BLOW FOR A TOURNAMENT THAT DEMANDED HER
She was following Caitlin Clark as the star of women’s basketball, but a season-ending knee injury almost resulted in a brawl and shattered her dream of winning a national championship in Los Angeles
We ached. We grieved. How else would folks react Monday night upon seeing the JuJu bun, the hairstyle that helped make her famous, pressed hard against the floor? Both of her hands were clutched against her right knee. She was looking upward and screaming in her gold USC jersey. She was weeping, buckled by a crashing dream.
Women’s basketball didn’t need the shocking pain. It didn’t need JuJu Watkins heading to the hospital, preparing for immediate surgery, leaving the NCAA tournament without its biggest superstar one season after Caitlin Clark. It didn’t need pundits wondering if she was a victim, though she fell after planting her leg and not because of vicious contact from Mississippi State, which collapsed with two defenders and muscled her.
She is much too special to go away. In Los Angeles, beyond Shohei Ohtani and LeBron James, no one is a bigger sports celebrity. She shows up at a Dodgers party and steals the show from the World Series champs. The mother of Jayden Daniels noticed Watkins talking to her son last weekend and sat between them, prompting rumors about advising a girl not to interfere with the gifted quarterback. Not far from campus, a Nike billboard of her covers three buildings.
Best of all, Watkins was expected to contend for a national championship against UCLA and Paige Bueckers at Connecticut. Where would the parade be held? How many fans does she have — Snoop Dogg, Michael B. Jordan, Flea, Vanessa Bryant, all at her games? “JuJu Watkins is one of one, she’s incredible,” Lakers coach JJ Redick said. Now, her future is cloudy with rehabilitation as her primary duty after she was carried out of Galen Center. Who doesn’t feel awful?
“I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t rattled seeing JuJu lying on the floor and crying,” coach Lindsay Gottlieb said. “This is a human game and so I obviously tried my best to be what I need to be for the team, but internally, it’s a lot.”
The home crowd was shaken. Watkins tumbled awkwardly. Every offensive possession, the enemy was booed. The cheerleaders were taunted at halftime. After USC’s 96-59 win, the handshake line was filled with anger among players who were separated. “We know that we've got no punks in our locker room, that we have a team that's going to step up,” Gottlieb said. “This team rallied, they rallied for (Watkins), they rallied for each other. You can't tell me that the energy of the crowd and how angry they were with the other team and how much they were for our team is so much about what JuJu has given to this arena, to this program, to this city.”
Said Kiki Iriafen, who scored 36 points: “It just shows how ride-or-die our fans are. It’s hard when you have such a key player not with you. For us, it was just making sure we got the job done. We want our season to be extended.”
As it is, the women have been shortchanged in March Madness. ESPN is paying only $65 million to the NCAA when it should have been charged double or more. The men’s tournament is watched this year, thanks to Cooper Flagg and no Cinderellas, leading to bigger TV ratings. The women should be watched too, but without Watkins, the sport doesn’t have a monster who wanted the title that eluded Clark.
Attention will veer to Bueckers, who scored 34 points Monday in her final game at Gampel Pavilion and earned a standing ovation from 10,000 fans. “I’ve had the time of my life here,” she told the crowd. “It's been the five years I've dreamt of as a kid.”
Said coach Geno Auriemma: “Everything you all have said about her, that everybody's written about her, it's all true. Every part of it. I wouldn't be able to sit here and add anything to that. Her game and what she does speaks for itself and it's a testament to her, to her work, to her love of basketball, love of being in the gym. She's being rewarded and that in itself is just fulfilling. It is for me and I hope it is for her.”
The player who fell into Watkins was Chandler Prater. Thank goodness we didn’t have a brawl afterward. “They’re gonna stand behind their home team. They’re gonna go hard for JuJu,” said MSU guard Jerkaila Jordan, who scored 17 points. “I couldn’t do nothing but respect them.”
“My prayers and thoughts are with JuJu,” MSU coach Sam Purcell said. “I’m hoping the best for her because she’s special.”
Watkins will return to the Trojans and ponder a WNBA future. She still has 16 national marketing contracts. In the next few days, she’ll watch as they try to win without her. Said USC guard Talia Von Oelhoffen: “As an athlete you're good at compartmentalizing. Obviously, Ju is a lot for the team. But we have a lot of talent, we have a lot of depth and I don't think we're shaken by losing one player no matter who it is.”
Yet, we’re still stunned. “Obviously just heartbroken, but at the same time, I hope she can at some point see just the significance that she has here that goes so far beyond just her talent and abilities,” Gottlieb said. “I mean that's really what is generational about it, the way she's galvanized everyone.”
Avoid the rewind button. The look on her face is blinding. You might cry, too.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.