SPOKANE, Wash. — I concur with Jim Bickel. The 75-year-old Spokanite wore a message spelled out on printer paper and taped to his turtleneck Monday night, when he attended just the second live women’s basketball game of his life: “JuJu. Wish you were here.”
Yes, sir. Same.
Because without USC’s injured star, it was impossible not to wonder: What if?
What if JuJu Watkins hadn’t had to watch Monday’s Elite Eight game at home in L.A., a torn ACL limiting her to cheering and FaceTime-ing and just … watching as her top-seeded teammates fought on but fell short, 78-64, against second-seeded UConn. Knowing her squad needed her against Huskies superstar Paige Bueckers, who is playing with the urgency of a star running out of college runway.
What if the Trojans (31-4) could have replaced the Funko Pop JuJu Watkins on their bench this weekend with the real-life JuJu Watkins? What if they had Watkins’ gravitational force working for them on the court Monday in front of a crowd of 10,141 in Spokane Arena? Her 23.9 points per game? If they’d had JuJu Swatkins out there serving as a pest and a deterrent?
Might the result have been something akin to the teams’ December meeting, a 72-70 USC victory in Storrs?
And what of the Battle Of L.A. in Tampa that never will be? USC came just one win short of an epic USC vs. UCLA rivalry game; it wouldn’t have been just pride on the line in that national semifinal, but a spot in the championship game.
Instead, UCLA (34-2) will get UConn (35-3) when the Final Four begins Friday at Amalie Arena.
And we’ll never get answers to any of those what-ifs, so better to ask the other question: What’s next?
Something good. Because even without the best player in the country, the fact remains: USC finished as one of the best eight teams in the nation before bowing out Monday.
Fans, new and old, can look forward to learning what USC will look like when it can plug Watkins back in with this precocious cast of seven rising sophomores. They can anticipate seeing her play off of Kennedy Smith, Avery Howell and Kayleigh Heckel, freshmen who especially acquitted themselves valiantly after losing Watkins last week early in their second-round win against Mississippi State.
Then do the math on what it will look like when they add Jazzy Davidson, a 6-foot-1 guard from Oregon and ESPN’s third-ranked recruit in the nation.
And enjoy the Southern California sun coming up tomorrow.
“The freshmen, their performance in the Sweet 16 was unbelievable, a preview of what’s to come in the next few years,” said graduate transfer Talia Van Oelhoffen, who rallied the Trojans with 10 points in the third quarter of her last college game, helping USC cut the Huskies’ 19-point lead to five.
“I give a lot of credit to USC for what they were able to do, given what they had to endure with JuJu,” UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. “Unfortunately, some stuff catches up to you because at this point in the year, somebody like JuJu would have been needed to carry them over the hump. Like, we have Paige.”
They sure do. And she came through with a game-high 31 points while her freshman teammate Sarah Strong added 22 points and 17 rebounds to lead the the Huskies to their second consecutive victory over USC in the Elite Eight.
At home, Watkins shared her thoughts in a post on Instagram: “Thank you all for the incredible love and support,” she wrote, “… y’all have given me so much hope.
“Right now, my heart is with my teammates – I wish I could have been out there battling, but I couldn’t be prouder of the fight we’ve fought together.”
Like South L.A. native Rayah Marshall, who closed her Trojans career with a 23-point, 15-rebound game, and said afterward: “We all went down fighting as a Trojan and that’s the culture, continue to ‘Fight On.’”
This year and going forward too, because Trojans coach Lindsay Gottlieb is intent on answering what’s next? by moving on past the Elite Eight.
“This is where we wanted to be,” she said. “And we now feel disappointed that we didn’t take this step this year. But obviously there are circumstances that make it really hard at this stage to win this one.”
Circumstances that left Mr. Bickel, the new women’s basketball fan, so heartbroken he said, “I damn near shed a tear.”
Gottlieb is right there with him.
“At some point the emotions of the last seven days will kick in more,” said Gottlieb, who left an NBA assistant coaching job with the Cleveland Cavaliers to take over USC’s women’s program four years ago. “It was only tonight a week ago that one of the best players in college basketball and just so meaningful to everything we are went down.
“… Just, like, crushed for JuJu, and the game, because that just wasn’t supposed to happen like that. But also, I have no doubt that her comeback’s going to be legendary. And I have no doubt that the strength of the program is not in doubt, and I think we proved that.”
