It’s her own doing, but yes, there are a ton of demands on JuJu Watkins.
Requests for her time, her thoughts, her autograph. For her to perform, to shoot and score — but not to shoot too much. To lead and be excellent and keep the bun looking perfect.
To deliver a national championship for USC.
To etch her name permanently among L.A.’s great champions. To know that if she comes up short, it’ll leave a hole in her story. An unavoidable void, no way around it.
That isn’t an entirely fair burden on a 21-year-old who missed most of the NCAA tournament as a sophomore and all of her junior season because of a torn anterior cruciate ligament. But she knows as well as anyone, life’s not fair. Life’s what happens while you’re busy making other plans.
One day, you’re staring straight on at the goal — job’s just started — on Selection Sunday, learning your team’s pathway through the NCAA tournament. Determination all over your face after losing an Elite Eight thriller against UConn as a freshman.
Eight days later, you’ve got everyone from your head coach to people you’ll never meet in tears over your career-altering spill in a second-round game at Galen Center.
It’s hard to quantify Watkins’ coast-to-coast impact, but her absence seemed to make fans only fonder. Nearly 8,000 people were there to welcome Watkins back in the No. 3-ranked Trojans’ 118-40 home-opening blowout victory over Utah State last Sunday, most of the crowd getting the memo and wearing matching No. 12 jerseys or T-shirts with Watkins’ face on them.
They came to see the 2025 Naismith Player of the Year stuff the stat sheet: 32 points in 27 minutes, a career-high 16 rebounds, five steals.
To see no-look passes and look-away baskets. To see the smooth, 6-foot-2 guard locked all the way back in, playing basketball like she missed it, all business but breaking character occasionally — like an actor unable to contain her smile in a “Saturday Night Live” sketch with Will Ferrell.
So far this season, it’s been all smiles, no brakes for the Trojans, who’ve scored 100-plus points in their first three wins, the first time a USC women’s team has reached 100 in three consecutive outings since 1980.
Up next on Sunday: the second installment of the home-and-home series with No. 1 South Carolina, in Bons Secours Wellness Arena in Greenville, S.C. It’ll be an important early test for these Trojans, who are young, fun and co-headlined by sophomore Jazzy Davidson and freshman Saniyah Hall, top-of-their-class recruits like Watkins was.
Pool their talents and they’ve got themselves a bona fide national championship contender.
And you know how ring culture is. Pervasive.
Remember when Breanna Stewart — a four-time national champion at UConn — said that without an NCAA title Caitlin Clark couldn’t be considered one of the greats of college basketball, never mind that she led Iowa (Iowa!?) to consecutive national championship games.
We’ve heard four-time NBA champion Shaquille O’Neal regularly roast Charles Barkley, a Dream Teamer and Basketball Hall of Famer, for being a no-time champion on “Inside the NBA.”
And we understand why, when two-time WNBA champ and former Trojan Lisa Leslie addressed Watkins’ team before the season, she made sure to mention that although the college game has changed, the main thing remains the main thing: “It’s still about if you can hang banners here … the Big Ten championship, which you guys have been able to do. And then, the last hump is getting to a national championship. Right?”
Right?
“We’re all trying to get better day by day, but I want to win for [Watkins],” USC women’s basketball coach Lindsay Gottlieb said. “For all the players on our team, to experience what that would feel like. But I think that the courage that took for JuJu to come here can’t be overstated. What she’s done to elevate the sport, what she’s done to elevate USC women’s basketball, is really significant.
“And I know how history judges players. There’s no question, she’s going to be at the top of this game for a very long time. But for her, I want that also to include champion, because she’s deserving of everything that comes with the magnitude of that.”
In every other way, Watkins has already won. Hearts. Minds. Endorsement deals.
“Nobody goes to a school and thinks that they don’t want to bring in a national championship,” junior guard Rian Forestier said. “But to me, she’s put SC on the map, she’s brought so much talent here … she’s brought back the winning culture. A national championship would be great, but to look at what she’s done, I mean, it’s incredible.”
I mean, she’s right. And Watkins’ fans might want a title more for her than from her. Still, everyone wants it — including her. “I want it really badly,” she said recently. “But in a healthy way.”
“I know I have limited time here,” Watkins added last weekend. “So just being really present in everything and not letting the goals taunt me, or hunt me — sorry, haunt me.”
Any or all of the above, because for Watkins this season is foremost about “being really present, that’s what I mean in a healthy way. We have these big goals, but just taking it one step at a time.”
That’s not the only way to walk down such a challenging goal. But it’s the best way. One intentional step at a time.
And, just saying: Being married to the moment is what worked for UCLA, which won its first national title last season while Watkins rehabbed offstage. So be quick, but don’t hurry, especially because we don’t officially know how tight a deadline Watkins is on.
She could have another year of eligibility if she wanted, but academically — and, it seems, spiritually — she’s a senior. And a no-brainer No. 1 pick.
The WNBA’s draft lottery also is Sunday, when Watkins’ hometown Sparks — a team in disarray and reportedly up for sale — will learn where their two lottery picks fall. They have their own pick, on account of a 37-51 combined record over the past two seasons, which comes with a 2.4% chance of being the first selection. Their other pick — via Phoenix, in return for trading Kelsey Plum — gives them 1.2% odds.
The rebooted Houston Comets and the second-year Toronto Tempo are tied with the best odds to secure the top pick, 32.9%.
But let’s not get caught up in that now.
Let’s be present. Enjoy this moment. Take in however much is left of this chapter of Watkins’ basketball career.
Appreciate her scaling the mountain again, with a beat on the rarefied air at the top. That’s where she belongs, after all, at the summit. She just has to get there.
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