She may have played only 18 games on the collegiate level, but freshman guard JuJu Watkins is taking USC women’s basketball to places it has not been in a long, long time.
On Friday night, Watkins gave the Trojans a performance for the ages. The freshman phenom’s 51 points were the most scored in a single game in the history of USC’s program, surpassing Cherie Nelson’s 50-point game against Cal in 1989. It was also the most points scored by any Division 1 college basketball player – men’s or women’s – in the 2023-24 season. Simply put, she was unstoppable on the offensive side, as the No. 15 Trojans earned a hard-fought 67-58 victory on the road over No. 4 Stanford.
“Tonight, we saw something I’ve never seen before in my life,” head coach Lindsay Gottlieb said after the game. “The most significant thing is that [Watkins] is coming off our team’s toughest loss of the year and a performance she wasn’t happy with. Her demeanor, from the second that game ended against Washington until now, is what sets her apart, to me, more than these numbers. … What is so special about her is everything inside, and that came out today in a way that, if you love basketball, I don’t know how you don’t love this.”
Watkins’ huge scoring night was not just a luxury; USC needed every point she had to secure its first win at Maples Pavilion since 2001. The Cardinal made their defensive prowess felt in the very early stages of the contest, with the Pac-12′s blocks leader, senior forward Cameron Brink, completely locking down the paint. Brink rejected three Trojan shots within the first five minutes of the game, and USC failed to score for three straight minutes when Watkins was on the bench.
Early in the second quarter, Watkins truly answered the Trojans’ call for offense when she went on a 7-0 run by hitting a mid-range jump shot, draining a three off her steal and ripping the ball out of Brink’s hands on her way to a breakaway layup. That period was her most dominant, when she scored 13 points on 6-of-7 shooting. At halftime, Watkins had 25 of USC’s 31 points, and, at points in the third quarter, she was out-scoring Stanford by herself.
Brink and junior forward Kiki Iriafen’s lockdown defense in the paint kept Watkins, who is usually an elite finisher at the rim, far away from the hoop, but she was unconscious from mid-range. Throughout the night, she used her stepback move to create just the slightest bit of separation between her and her defender and used that space to drain shot after shot.
“It’s not easy at all,” Watkins said about her performance. “Stanford’s a great team, so to come here and get a win means a lot to the team. We battle every day in practice; we battled every day in the summer. A lot of that has really helped me transition from high school to college. I’m just grateful for my coach and my teammates, who I wouldn’t be able to do this without.”
Defensively, the Trojans knew they would have their work cut out for them against a Cardinal team averaging over 80 points per game. The name of the game for Gottlieb’s team was to keep Brink and Iriafen, averaging a combined 46.5 points per game, out of the paint.
Overall, that effort was a rousing success, as USC forced both players into awkward shots far from the rim, which led to very inefficient nights for both players. Combined, they shot just 31% from the field, causing Stanford to go on numerous scoring droughts while Watkins continued to build the lead.
“I think we took a lot of bad shots, to be honest with you,” Stanford head coach Tara VanDerveer said. “Our shot selection and inability to play with any flow was very disappointing. We cannot expect to beat a really good team taking the shots that we took.”
While the defensive result may have looked according to plan for the Trojans, the path there was anything but. From the first quarter, USC’s frontcourt found itself in foul trouble, battling the Cardinal’s bigs for every rebound and battle in the paint. By the home stretch of the fourth quarter, junior forward Rayah Marshall, junior center Clarise Akunwafo and graduate forward Kaitlyn Davis had all fouled out. Yet, the Trojans held on.
“I’m really proud of the way our frontcourt battled,” Gottlieb said. “You never draw it up that way, but we felt a magic in [the foul outs]. We felt like we had to find a way to get it done. I think [Stanford] was out of sorts a little bit because of what JuJu was doing. I hoped we could keep scoring because I was nervous about the inside, but I had all the confidence in the world that our players’ mentality was right.”
USC’s ten-point lead after 30 minutes did not last long, as Stanford slowly crawled back to within striking distance. As Watkins was being double- or triple-teamed on every possession, leading to some costly turnovers, the Cardinal got within two points of the Trojans as the game entered its final stretch. Watkins had only scored four points in the quarter thus far; the team needed another source of offense. With less than two minutes to go, graduate guard McKenzie Forbes answered the bell.
Forbes may not have expected the ball to be passed to her on the perimeter with five seconds left on the shot clock, but she had it nonetheless. She took one dribble inside the 3-point arc and, with Stanford graduate guard Hannah Jump’s hand right in her face, launched up a prayer. Somehow, the circus shot fell right as the shot clock expired, getting the USC lead right back to two possessions.
“I just knew I had to get it up,” Forbes said of her circus shot. “I was trying to get fouled a little bit, but, thank the basketball gods, it went in.”
Forbes was not done securing the victory after that. With under a minute left, she ran from the right side of the lane after a missed floater to the left corner to track down her own missed shot, securing an extra possession and forcing the Cardinal to begin fouling.
Those late-game fouls by Stanford secured USC’s victory but also ensured that Watkins’ performance would officially be cemented in the record books. Watkins was sent to the free-throw line four times in the final two minutes of the game and made 7-of-8 in that span. Her very last free throw was her record-breaking 51st point of the contest, and the entire Trojan bench erupted into celebration the second the ball fell through the net.
Reflecting on what that record meant, Watkins said, “It’s crazy. I don’t really think about it too much. I have a long way to go to consider myself in a category with Cheryl [Miller,] Lisa [Leslie] and the greats. I’m just blessed to be in this environment, and I’m just soaking it all in. But, we have a game on Sunday, so I’m gonna take it all in, then head back to the gym.”
The win snapped a three-game road losing streak for USC and marked its first Pac-12 win away from Galen Center all season. Overall, the Trojans improve to 15-4 on the season and 5-4 in the Pac-12. The Cardinal fall to 19-3 on the season and 8-2 in the conference after losing their first Pac-12 home game since February 2020.
USC will finish its Bay Area road trip on Sunday at noon against the Cal Golden Bears.