Juju Watkins is Leading a Renaissance of Women's College Basketball

Everybody can’t cease looking at Juju Watkins. It’s January, and we’re with the USC freshman star outdoors of the Galen Heart. There’s an extended line of individuals ready on the ticket sales space in anticipation for tonight’s males’s volleyball matchup towards Harvard, however they will’t assist wanting over at us in curiosity. Because the solar units over downtown L.A. and legendary photographer Atiba Jefferson is snapping away, Watkins is in her factor and serving seems to be whereas rocking a knitted cropped grey sweater and cargo pants with a pair of Js. It’s giving main California dreamin’ vibes when, all of the sudden out of nowhere, somebody driving in a automotive close by screams out the window.

“We love you Jujuuuuuuu!!!!!!!!”

Now all eyes actually are on Watkins. She smiles and humbly laughs it off—later she admits that it may’ve been a teammate or one thing. “I don’t know what that was,” Watkins says, whereas sitting on the group’s observe court docket. “That may have been my teammate truthfully simply trolling me. Typically I get acknowledged, however not too typically.”

Juju Watkins covers SLAM 248. Store now.

Yeah, OK. Whereas she could be humble about all the eye, there’s a purpose everybody calls her “The Juju Present.” Watkins was so massive time in highschool, Chris Brown and a pair of Chainz would pull as much as her video games at Sierra Canyon to look at her play. The No. 1 recruit within the Class of 2023 has had legends like LeBron James, whose son Bronny is at present a freshman on the USC males’s group, and USC all-time nice Cheryl Miller, in addition to fellow California natives James Harden and Paul George, give her nothing however excessive reward. Step onto the USC campus, and also you’ll see her No. 12 jersey within the faculty bookstore.

“I’ve at all times dreamt of taking part in for a university that I like and with the ability to have a lot satisfaction in the place I’m going to varsity,” she tells us. “To lastly be right here and have made that call and be assured [in it] is a dream come true.”

Proper outdoors, there’s a newsstand with copies of the Every day Trojan, and the very very first thing we discover is that the principle picture within the sports activities part is Watkins dribbling down the court docket with the caption, “USC will want a giant recreation from her to drag off the upset towards the Bruins.”

She did that and extra. Just a few days after her SLAM cowl shoot, Juju dropped a double-double in a win towards UCLA in entrance of a record-breaking 10,657 followers. Her 32 factors and 10 boards earned her Related Press Nationwide Participant of the Week and the Tamika Catchings Nationwide Freshman of the Week. Could we remind you: she’s solely 18 years previous, and sure, she’s already a bucket-getting-dime-dropping-silky-smooth guard with a recreation so fluid and pro-ready, it’s mesmerizing to look at.

However let’s not get forward of ourselves fairly but. Really, nah, let’s. That’s what the sports activities world does with each promising younger participant, and to maintain it actual, nobody ever hesitates to declare the dudes the subsequent massive issues. In any case, didn’t the world begin calling LeBron “The Chosen One” again when he was in highschool? Talking of which, even he’s declared Juju is the long run: “She’s the subsequent best factor in ladies’s basketball,” he stated within the Los Angeles Instances.

As she leads a renaissance of L.A. hoops and a brand new period of freshman stars, Watkins additionally represents why ladies’s sports activities isn’t just essential to assist and spend money on, however thrilling and particular.

“I feel ladies’s basketball is continually evolving, so simply to be part of that and be in that blend is an honor.”

It was simply three years in the past after we have been within the health club with a 15-year-old Juju and her pops, Robert, to movie her “Day within the Life.” Rising up within the neighborhood of Watts, Watkins was dropping 30 items at simply 6 years previous and was already so dominant that in the midst of a recreation, a youthful boy actually picked her up and tried to take her off the court docket as a result of he couldn’t guard her. She’d play within the Westchester Park rec league, and based on Robert, would even get “upset” every time they’d play one-on-one.

“That’s after I knew she had it,” he advised us. “When she began getting mad.”

Right now, Watkins performs with that very same fireplace, however she’s realized to channel it right into a competitiveness that’s deadly each time she steps on the ground. She transforms into a special particular person, she admits, who’s drastically totally different from the laid-back, chill one she is off the court docket. “Actually, I simply assume basketball brings out one other aspect to me. [I’m] very mellow off the court docket,” she says. “Typically it’s an excessive amount of. Screaming, all that, that’s probably not me.”

The world noticed that aspect of her proper from the leap in her faculty debut towards Ohio State. Amid a 32-point efficiency, Watkins was clapping and screaming in pleasure after ending powerful layups on the rim. When the win was secured, there she was once more, chest-bumping her teammates. Her efficiency broke Lisa Leslie’s freshman debut scoring report (30). “I feel coming into [my] freshman season, I didn’t actually have too many expectations for myself,” Watkins says. “I feel simply getting my toes moist, I suppose as folks would say. However now that I’m lastly in it, I’m setting extra objectives for myself and count on extra for myself. However truthfully, on the finish of the day, [it’s] simply having enjoyable.”

She’d break one other report held by Leslie simply six video games in, this time for many 30-point video games by a USC freshman in program historical past. She additionally led the Trojans to a report of 6-0 and their highest AP Prime 25 rating (No. 6) in 29 years. Right here’s one other loopy stat for you: after a win towards Cal Poly, Juju had posted 161 factors, 45 rebounds, 19 assists, 14 steals and eight blocks for the season. In accordance with OptaSTATS, within the final 20 years, just one different NBA, WNBA or Division I males’s or ladies’s participant has put up numbers like that over a six-game span. Guess who it was? LeBron Raymone James.

As of press time, Watkins is posting 26.1 ppg, ranked just under Caitlin Clark for highest common within the nation. For Juju, bringing a profitable tradition to USC has at all times been the objective.

“I feel I simply need to actually instill a profitable tradition right here at SC, I feel that’s what’s most essential—that when my teammates and I depart, SC continues to be thriving and doing rather well,” she says. “[I want to] simply guarantee that L.A. ladies’s basketball is at all times on high and actually signify the West Coast and the place I’m from [in] Watts.”

Legacy is synonymous with the Watkins household: Watkins Memorial Park is known as after her great-grandfather, a neighborhood civil rights chief who based the Watts Labor Group Motion Committee. Juju grew up taking part in both in her household’s yard or on the Watts health club, which can be named after him. Each her father and mom, Sari, have been athletes in highschool and raised Juju to be one of the best at no matter she did. Additionally they gave her the center title Skies, becoming provided that their daughter would in the future play on the similar establishment because the Corridor of Famer Miller, who as soon as stated that for Juju, “The sky’s the restrict,” per the Related Press.

“[My mom] beloved Lisa and Cheryl, she grew up in that period,” says Watkins. Upon watching the Ladies of Troy documentary along with her mother, she obtained to see simply how “inspiring” gamers like Miller, Cynthia Cooper-Dyke and fellow L.A.-native Tina Thompson actually have been, and nonetheless are. “It’s actually a sisterhood right here,” she says. “I like that I can name on them every time and so they’re there for me. I recognize that.”

Miller and Cooper-Dyke each helped convey the 2—and solely—basketball championships the Trojans program has ever gained (1983, 1984). These banners are hanging simply above the observe court docket, in clear view from the place Watkins is sitting proper now. After we ask her about what sort of legacy she needs to depart at USC, Watkins emphasizes bringing USC ladies’s basketball again to the highest. However she’s additionally considering larger. Dreaming larger. It’s not nearly her, however concerning the subsequent era.

“I owe a number of my success to my household and my metropolis, and I’m simply planning on doing as a lot as I can for teenagers rising up in the identical metropolis as me and throughout L.A.,” she says, “exhibiting [them] that or being a testomony to what can occur if you simply work exhausting and observe your desires.”