Tag: Juju Watkins

USC, JuJu Watkins turned the tables on Colorado and Jaylyn Sherrod

USC didn’t just avenge the Colorado loss from January; the Trojans won the way CU defeated them a month ago.

USC did indeed avenge its loss to Colorado from earlier in the season. The Trojans’ victory on Friday night in Los Angeles enabled the Women of Troy to split the season series against the Buffaloes, who had defeated USC in Boulder on January 21. Winning the game is what mattered most to USC, but the way in which the Trojans won this game had to be particularly satisfying for them. They really did turn the tables on Colorado in an instance of basketball role reversal.

In order to understand this, you need to go back to that January 21 game before returning to Friday night’s action.

Let’s take a look:

JuJu Watkins, Lindsay Gottlieb react to huge USC women’s basketball win over Colorado

JuJu Watkins is enjoying the journey and knows there is more room to grow for herself and this team.

USC women’s basketball continues to rise and improve. The Trojans beat Colorado, 87-81, on Friday night in the Galen Center. They are now 21-4 on the season and just one game out of the lead in the Pac-12 after Stanford got upset by Arizona. USC is in the hunt for a No. 1 seed in the 2024 Women’s NCAA Tournament. It has been a really good season for this group, led by superstar JuJu Watkins under the direction of head coach Lindsay Gottlieb.

JuJu and Gottlieb reacted to this important win along with other USC players and the beat writers who cover this team, which will host NCAA Tournament games one month from now:

JuJu Watkins set records and wowed women’s basketball fans with another 40-point game for USC

It seems like JuJu Watkins’ name is popping up alongside the great Cheryl Miller more often as the season goes along.

We should have known that JuJu Watkins was going to find the bottom of the net with relative ease on Friday night after making a shot from behind the bench during warmups.

The freshman sensation led the USC Trojans to their seventh straight win in Los Angeles on Friday night, pouring in a stunning 42 points as USC topped Colorado 87-81. Watkins also piled up four assists, four steals and four rebounds, and set a few more records in the process.

It was Watkins’ 11th game of the season where she had scored at least 30 points, pushing her past the legendary Cheryl Miller for the most by a USC player in a single season.

Watkins’ 42 points are also the most points scored by any USC player – man or woman – in the Trojans’ Galen Center, which opened in 2006.

In case you live on the East Coast or called it an early night, here’s the highlights from another big night from Watkins. She – and Pac-12 After Dark – keep delivering this season:

After the game, Watkins had a crowd of fans waiting for her for photos and autographs.

While players like Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo, LSU’s Mikaylah Williams, Fairfield’s Meghan Andersen and Iowa State’s Audi Crooks are having great season, Watkins seems like the frontrunner to win the National Freshman of the Year award. She’s second in the nation in scoring – trailing only Iowa’s Caitlin Clark – with 28.1 points per game.

And we’re all looking forward to seeing her score a bunch more.

JuJu Watkins delivers another vintage bounce-back game for USC, adds to her aura

JuJu Watkins is money in the bank when she follows a difficult game. She doesn’t have two bad games in a row.

The great players respond when challenged. It’s a simple but profound way of appreciating the very best athletes in any sport. When they get punched in the mouth or have a tough day at the office, they punch back in the next game when everyone is wondering how they will react to a little adversity and failure. JuJu Watkins is already demonstrating, as a USC freshman, that when she has a bad game, you can take it to the bank that her next game will be special.

Remember when JuJu went 8 of 27 in the loss to Washington? She scored 51 points in her next game at Stanford.

JuJu hit just 6 of 32 shots against Oregon State this past Sunday. How did she respond? How’s 42 points against Colorado on Friday?

Let’s look at this masterful performance and some of its most important details:

USC’s JuJu Watkins showed off her incredible precision with a one-handed heave from behind the bench

JuJu Watkins truly can’t miss.

USC women’s basketball star JuJu Watkins is still in the midst of her true freshman season, but she’s already taken the sport by storm.

The No. 1 recruit in the nation in the 2023 class, Watkins hit the ground running with 32 points in her collegiate debut, and she hasn’t slowed down since, turning in a 51-point game against Stanford earlier this month. She’s viewed as the next top rising star in the sport, and she showed off some of her talent on Friday night.

During warmups with the Trojans, Watkins effortlessly sank a one-handed heave from all the way behind the bench. As the USC women’s basketball official account said, there’s your QB1 right there.

She’s helped lead USC to a 20-4 record on the season and a top-10 ranking, and she could become a household name by the time the NCAA tournament rolls around. For now, we’ll just have to enjoy some awesome clips like this one.

JuJu Watkins gets big-league test against Colorado

JuJu Watkins, like all elite players, loves a challenge. Colorado should give her one on Friday. Here’s what to watch for:

JuJu Watkins has had a lot of special, memorable and unique games in her freshman season at USC. The game she played at Colorado on January 21 in Boulder was unique in a very bad way. That game against Colorado was the only game out of 24 in which JuJu Watkins fouled out. Not only did she foul out; she fouled out with nearly six minutes left. USC fought well but imperfectly with JuJu out. The Trojans had a chance to lead or tie in the final minute but ultimately fell short, 63-59.

As USC plays Colorado in a rematch on Friday night in Los Angeles, Watkins will definitely be motivated — not just to win, the central goal, but to prove a point and to show the discipline she lacked against Colorado. There’s a lot to consider about JuJu Watkins entering this game. Let’s take you through some of the most interesting JuJu Watkins plot points against Colorado, helping you to watch for certain details during Friday night’s game:

Why Sue Bird is predicting JuJu Watkins will be one of the best college basketball players ever

Sue Bird is saying the quiet parts out loud. Everybody needs a ticket to the JuJu Watkins show.

Remember in January of this year when I said JuJu Watkins isn’t Caitlin Clark, but she’s not far behind? Well, it’s time for another reminder that while the whole country is seemingly going wild over Caitlin (as they should), JuJu Watkins is quietly putting on a freshman campaign for the ages. Her game is getting so hard to ignore that Sue Bird is now watching.

I get it. Caitlin Clark is THE moment and the proverbial measuring stick for women’s college basketball dominance. Still, since the beginning of the season, I have been saying that this year’s freshman class is built differently. That class also includes a one-player wrecking crew named JuJu Watkins.

In case you aren’t familiar with her game, JuJu has 13 Pac-12 Freshman of the Week awards, 10 games of 30 or more points, made this week’s women’s basketball starting five and recently dropped 51 points in a game that earned her immediate Caitlin Clark comparisons.

SHE IS A FRESHMAN DOING THIS SORCERY ON A BASKETBALL COURT.

Sue Bird seems to understand how unique JuJu’s game is because she also brought up JuJu during a recent podcast episode where she discussed Caitlin.

Per Richard Deitsch of The Athletic, this is the nugget Sue dropped:

“There are other players right now in college basketball where you can feel excitement. JuJu Watkins is killing it at USC and could arguably end up being one of the best players ever. I’m not saying that loosely; it’s because of the way she is starting her career.”

JuJu Watkins hasn’t figured everything out yet at USC … because she’s a freshman

JuJu Watkins is great. JuJu Watkins is inefficient. JuJu is elite. JuJu is incomplete. All of these things can be true.

JuJu Watkins of USC hit just 6 of 32 shots on Sunday at Oregon State. She had a tough game at the offensive end of the floor, even tougher than her 8-of-27 game against Washington. Some people will look at that performance from Watkins and call her overrated. What they will miss is that JuJu still played elite defense and helped USC limit Oregon State to just 50 points in a huge win which has the Trojans in second place in the cutthroat Pac-12 Conference.

Obviously, however, people like talking about offense more than defense. Sports fans are naturally drawn to scoring points more than doing no-glory gruntwork. JuJu’s defense is elite and is a huge part of why she is such a great player, but let’s have the more difficult conversation about JuJu’s offense and why it is a work in progress.

There is a lot to unpack here, so let’s begin:

Women’s basketball national scoring leaders as of Feb. 18 (and steals)

Hannah continues to hold serve at third.

For one of the few times all season this past week, an opponent was able to solve Notre Dame’s [autotag]Hannah Hidalgo[/autotag]. NC State held the freshman phenom to a season-low 10 points.

It’s ironic that Hidalgo had her worst game when Iowa’s Caitlin Clark had her best game in which she not only broke the NCAA women’s scoring record but poured in a career-high 49 points. Alas, basketball is a funny game.

Here are the top 10 scorers in women’s basketball along with their steals numbers:

It’s time for the JuJu Watkins vs Caitlin Clark fan wars to end before they get worse

JuJu Watkins doesn’t think she’s better than Caitlin Clark, so why do some Clark fans think they have to tear down JuJu?

Over the weekend on our Trojans Wire social media timeline, we had a number of replies and comments in our mentions about how bad a player JuJu Watkins is compared to Caitlin Clark. Yes, JuJu Watkins missed 26 shots on Sunday against Oregon State. She didn’t play a great game. Saying JuJu needs to be better is logical and, moreover, correct. However, criticism of JuJu then went way overboard, as though appreciating good basketball was less of a goal than it was to simply tear down JuJu Watkins as part of a “JuJu Watkins vs Caitlin Clark” framing of the issue.

Not convinced this is true? We’ll show you, and we’ll get into a discussion of why comparisons of JuJu Watkins and Caitlin Clark should not lead to any fan wars. We have to nip this problem in the bud before it gets worse … and before USC and Iowa potentially face each other in the Women’s NCAA Tournament.

Let’s develop the conversation below: