LOS ANGELES — JuJu Watkins, as her assistant coach Beth Burns marvels, is an artist. She holds the brush. And she does her best work when she has fun, when her dribble flows from one hand to the next without a thought flowing in her mind when she paints with joy.
Joy, recently, has been hard to come by in the only home she’s ever known. Outside the Galen Center’s walls, on Sunday, her city was suffering. Outside Galen’s walls, ash drifted from Los Angeles sky, and Palisades and Eaton fires rampaged. Her own family, even, was forced to temporarily evacuate – all is fine now – as parents Bobby and Sari Watkins told the Southern California News Group.
But the people of Southern California still streamed into Galen Center Sunday night for USC’s game against Penn State Sunday, to see her. To see her program. It was nice, as fan Lia Eleopoulos said pregame, to disconnect. It was nice, as fan Jason Ito said, too, to get away from “the craziness of the world right now.”
The people, indeed, needed a reprieve. And JuJu Watkins gave them one.
She was transcendent from buzzer to buzzer, as USC beat Penn State 95-73 Sunday, putting together perhaps the best all-around performance of a USC career loaded with all-around performances. The numbers spoke for themselves: sophomore Watkins started the night 11-of-11 from the floor, showcasing the kind of mature efficiency in pace and shot selection that occasionally eluded her in her freshman year, finishing with 35 points on 13-of-15 shooting, 11 rebounds, three blocks and five steals.
The true eye-catcher Sunday, though, was not the black ink itself but the way Watkins wrote it. She threaded a right-to-left dribble between her legs, no sense of stress in her shoulders, as she pulled up for a buzzer-beating first-quarter three to put USC up 27-18 after a frame. She hit a second-quarter hesitation with mouth agape, crossing back and ducking through a thicket of Penn State arms for a pro-move layup. She nabbed a steal to end the first half and took off with time waning, finishing through contact for a righty layup with seconds before the break, Watkins beaming at a jumbotron camera as Galen erupted and fellow star Kiki Iriafen lifted her up in a bear-hug.
She was joy, personified, on a night where those who’d come out Sunday needed some “semblance of normalcy,” as former program legend Cheryl Miller said pregame.
Hours before USC-Penn State tipped off, as Miller recounted to the Southern California News Group, USC head coach Lindsay Gottlieb entered the Founders Club and kicked off a speech to program family and friends to thank them for their attendance. Sunday night’s contest easily could’ve been rescheduled, as a slew of sporting events around Southern California were rescheduled or axed in the wake of the week’s devastating fires. Former program legend Cherie Nelson, who once held USC’s single-game scoring record before Watkins broke it last year at Stanford, saw her mother Irene’s home lost in Altadena to the Eaton Fire.
But Penn State, still, made the trip to Los Angeles. And Nelson and Irene still made the trip to Galen Sunday, along with a host of USC women’s basketball alumni, coming together for a long-planned on-court halftime celebration of the program’s history.
“When one falls, we all fall, and when one succeeds, we all succeed,” Miller described to the Southern California News Group, of Gottlieb’s messaging. “And we just want to make sure that we’re here for everyone that’s going through this devastating time.”
They all watched, together, as a USC women’s program continued to make its trailblazers proud Sunday. As visually captivating as Watkins’ play has been across a now 12-game USC (16-1, 6-0 Big Ten) win-streak, transfer big Kiki Iriafen has been an equal heartbeat from the post, Gottlieb calling the two “the best duo in the country” after USC’s win over Maryland Wednesday. And Iriafen feasted on Penn State inside from the jump Sunday, with six of USC’s first 12 points, finishing with a dominant 28 points on 12-of-18 shooting.
After a shaky defensive start for USC, too often lackadaisical in cutting off driving lanes or providing post resistance as the Nittany Lions hung around for 16 minutes, the Trojans blitzed Penn State with a 15-0 run to end the first half and never looked back. Freshman guard Kayleigh Heckel gave USC a lift with five straight points late in the third, and center Rayah Marshall was integral in containing Penn State’s big and leading scorer Gracie Merkle, Marshall finishing with three blocks.