Can a JuJu-less USC do it again? Is UConn ready to win it all? Previewing an Elite Eight showdown
Written by I Dig Sports
SPOKANE, Wash. -- In the moments after Saturday's Sweet 16 win over Kansas State, USC players received a special FaceTime call. JuJu Watkins, the superstar and heartbeat of their team, phoned the locker room as her teammates celebrated their big win, hyping them up after USC had secured consecutive Elite Eight berths for the first time since 1982-84.
Watkins, responsible for revitalizing the USC women's basketball program after years of dormancy, had to watch the game from Los Angeles. The national player of the year front-runner sustained a season-ending ACL tear in the Trojans' second-round NCAA tournament game against Mississippi State, sending shockwaves throughout the sports world.
Gottlieb's 2-year-old daughter, Reese, blew kisses to Watkins over the phone. Confused, she asked, "JuJu's not hurt?" Gottlieb told her daughter, "No, she's still hurt, but she's happy today and with us."
Watkins will once more be supporting her Trojans from afar on Monday as No. 1 seed USC faces off against Paige Bueckers and the No. 2 seed UConn Huskies. This was the potential matchup every fan had circled as soon as the bracket dropped: a rematch of last year's Elite Eight and a showdown between two of the brightest stars in the game. If anything, fans were disappointed the two players would have to face each other at that stage of the tournament and both couldn't play in Tampa.
That excitement remains, but when the teams take the court Monday night, it won't be the same game everyone was hoping for -- UConn included.
Coach Geno Auriemma and Bueckers relate more than most to the predicament USC and Watkins face. UConn has dealt with a slew of season-ending injuries over the past few years, including to Bueckers. After winning national player of the year as a freshman, she sat out most of her sophomore season because of a tibial plateau fracture and meniscus tear. The following summer she tore her ACL and sat out the 2022-23 season.
It wasn't a surprise, then, that Auriemma and associate head coach Chris Dailey were among the first to reach out to Gottlieb in the hours after Watkins' injury. Bueckers reached out to Watkins, telling reporters "our heart breaks for her." She offered "whatever she needs, mentally, physically, if she needs to vent, ask questions."
"They have been through this," Gottlieb said, "and I think you don't feel it unless you've felt it before in that way."
Auriemma and Bueckers have experienced firsthand the ups and downs of the rehab process and what it takes to come out on the other side.
"If you're a competitor, if you're somebody like Paige, somebody like JuJu, or some of the other kids that have gone through this, they come back better," Auriemma said. "They come back stronger, they come back more determined, more resilient, more understanding that they can fight through things and overcome just about anything."
Bueckers agreed.
"You don't get to be as good as JuJu if you don't have a great motor, a great work ethic, and she's going to attack this process just as she's attacked basketball," she said. "And just as she's great at basketball, she's going to be great at this recovery process. Disappointed for her but know she will be back better than ever, and this will just be a little setback to the great story she will have."
For Bueckers, a drive to be great -- a shared quality that made her and Watkins stars in the first place -- helped her bounce back stronger than ever. In this tournament, she has scored 74 points over the past two games -- including a career-high 40 in the Sweet 16 on Saturday -- while boasting the top assist-to-turnover ratio in the country and shooting splits of 50-40-90 efficiency.
And now, with her days in a UConn jersey coming to an end, Auriemma and Gottlieb said they see a star playing with a greater sense of urgency as she tries to win a championship, which would be the program's first since 2016.
"You try not to think about the stakes or the pressure or getting to the Final Four," Bueckers said. "Obviously that's there, so you try not to think about it and just go out and play every single game the same way like it's your last, like it's the most important 40 minutes of your life. ... We just want the season to keep going as long as possible. So leaving nothing up to chance, giving it our all for that 40 minutes to play for another 40 is our team mindset."
The last time these teams met, in late December, the Trojans won 72-70 despite blowing an 18-point lead. This time, both teams will look different: Watkins scored 25 points against the Huskies and UConn guard Azzi Fudd played only eight minutes. It was her first game back after tweaking her knee earlier that month, and sixth game overall since returning from her ACL tear in November 2023. The sharpshooter -- the team's second-leading scorer in the postseason at 15.3 points per game -- said Sunday that in retrospect she wasn't ready to play that game, but since finding her groove over the past few months, she has felt like a "completely different player [with a] completely different mindset."
The Trojans are also discovering their new reality, though they're clear that the goal hasn't changed: securing the program's first Final Four since 1986 and national championship since 1984. It's just that the path to achieving those goals looks different now.
USC will look to play more through senior Kiki Iriafen, its prized transfer portal addition whom Gottlieb calls one of the best players in the country. And she doesn't have to do it alone. This team was always planning to rely heavily on its freshman class after the graduation of its trio of Ivy League transfer starters from last season. The Trojans believed in their freshmen all season, Gottlieb said; now they are just being asked to play slightly larger roles than expected.
The way that group has competed in the absence of Watkins -- Kennedy Smith and Avery Howell alone combined for 37 points against Kansas State -- only reiterated to Gottlieb that they're "winners above everything else."
The reality is that each team is just 40 minutes away from the Final Four. That's why Auriemma has long said this is the toughest game of the tournament.
The Huskies have experience on their side with five players who have played in an Elite Eight, including Bueckers and Fudd; USC, without Watkins, has only two, including only one starter in Rayah Marshall. But maybe the Trojans -- who have heard all those who counted them out once Watkins went down -- benefit from a lack of pressure on them.
Whoever is able to handle the pressure of this moment -- whether it be Bueckers, Fudd and the rest of the Huskies hungry for that elusive championship, or Iriafen, Smith and Howell playing for both themselves and their injured teammate -- will make all the difference.
"Some players are going to rise to the occasion, and some are going to shrink," Auriemma said. "It's just the nature of it."
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