Watkins was carried off the court with an apparent knee injury in the first quarter of the Trojans‘ win over Mississippi State. / Robert Hanashiro-Imagn Images
The No. 1 seed USC Trojans cruised to the Sweet 16 on Monday with an easy victory over the No. 9 Mississippi State Bulldogs. The win felt almost like a footnote.
Trojans guard JuJu Watkins was carried off the court early in the game with an apparent right knee injury. She did not return to the game and left the arena for medical testing. USC coach Lindsay Gottlieb said after the game there was no update on her condition. A leading contender for national player of the year, the sophomore is the engine of this roster, the core of its championship hopes and a star with unique gravitational pull. Any injury to Watkins would be a major blow to USC. It would represent just as much of one to college basketball as a whole.
Driving to the basket midway through the first quarter, Watkins hit the floor clutching her right knee after being fouled. She lay in visible pain as teammates and trainers crowded around her in a gym that had become eerily quiet. (The play was reviewed and was not upgraded from a common foul.) Watkins did not appear capable of putting any weight on the knee and was carried off by trainers.
USC was already up 13–2 when Watkins exited. The game continued in similar fashion: Mississippi State never cut the lead to single digits as the Trojans won 96–59 to make their second straight Sweet 16.
There is perhaps no individual player whose team is more explicitly built around her. Watkins revived a struggling program when she decided to stay in her hometown of Los Angeles and play for USC. The Trojans had not gone beyond the first round of the NCAA tournament in nearly two decades until Watkins took them to the Elite Eight as a freshman. She had sights on taking them even further as a sophomore this year.
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Watkins is not just the Trojans’ leading scorer but the center of everything they do. She averages 24.6 points, 7.0 rebounds and 3.5 assists; she can score on all three levels and draws fouls with striking consistency. Her presence shapes every action. There is almost nothing this group runs that does not flow through her.
Yet the cast around her is much stronger than it was in her freshman year. USC is deeper and more balanced this season than was the case in 2024. Gottlieb brought in several key transfers: Kiki Iriafen has been a significant addition at power forward, and Talia von Oelhoffen is an experienced, versatile guard. The Trojans have gotten serious minutes from the best freshmen class in the nation, a trio made up of Kennedy Smith, Avery Howell and Kayleigh Heckel. Compared to last season’s Elite Eight squad, they are far more capable defensively and much better at controlling the pace. They are certainly stronger for the presence of 6′ 3″ senior Iriafen, who is mobile for her size and can work both in the post and from midrange, taking over in Watkins’s stead to drop 36 points against Mississippi State on Monday.
This can still be a capable team without Watkins. But it would unquestionably be a very different and less explosive one. The Trojans have very little experience being on the floor without her: She has started every game this season and is the only player on the roster to average more than 30 minutes. Playing without her is not losing a key piece so much as putting together an entirely different puzzle.
That led to a postgame locker room devoid of the usual celebratory jumping and water bottle spraying. “The thing I really want you to hear me say is how proud I am of you,” Gottlieb told her team. They were going to the Sweet 16. But they did not know how much they might have lost.
USC already had a rather difficult road to the Final Four. Sharing a region with the No. 2 UConn Huskies, the same team who beat the Trojans last year in the Elite Eight, there was never going to be much room for error. (That potential rematch had been circled on brackets early as one of the best games that might happen in the tournament.) And the absence of Watkins makes just getting there much harder. Their upcoming Sweet 16 matchup will be against the No. 5 Kansas State Wildcats, fresh off a tough win over the No. 4 Kentucky Wildcats, and bolstered by the return of their senior center Ayoka Lee.
To continue without its star would be an obvious challenge for USC. It would also shape the sense of possibility around the entire tournament. Watkins’s talent is matched by her star power: Her signature bun is the most recognizable silhouette in college basketball. Every tournament game has been dotted with television commercials bearing her likeness. If there are few players who can take over a game so completely, there are virtually none who can do it with such a sweeping, dramatic presence. She is the kind of player made for March. The month would be worse off without her.
