The Watkins was so much accumulated from the beginning – since she stood on the USC campus, she was she, who brought the program back to the mountains. This season she was a player who carried star power in Women’s College basketball after Caitlin Clark.
There was a lot of weight on the shoulders of someone, but she managed well with them. She proved under this responsibility and bloomed in the center of attention.
But last weekend, the biggest star in women’s university basketball was kidnapped after collapsed to the court with seasonal tears. Her absence was left by the USC fans stunned and female university basketball world restless.
Some kind words for juju watkins 🥹 pic.twitter.com/8Symkoucu
– EsPNW (@PNW) March 25, 2025
Salt in injury? During the NCAA tournament, ads with Watkins will continue to play. Right now she is the biggest individual star in female college hoops and draws on celebrities in his games at Galen Center. This reception would develop with the finals of four journeys or the National Championship as an undeniable Hollywood story.
While prayers were raining on Los Angeles for the healing of Watkins, the questions went crazy: What now? Szo now?
It’s a fair question. And it reflects that female basketball chorus was repeatedly asked after the last season when Clark went to WNBA. Would her legions of fans and millions of spectators who set records that follow her game for Iowa to hold around for college 2024-25?
No one expected that this season’s tournament corresponds to record spectators last season, but progress cannot be measured only in year -on -year profits. And while no one expected the numbers that Clark Mania fever got on the pitch before the season, the trend continues in one direction: up.
The first two rounds of the tournament had no cinderelllas, no big upset, no Clark. There were light on playwrights that some believe that it is necessary to attract viewers. Yet the numbers are not lying-the first two rounds ranked on the second best in the history of the tournament and came 43 percent higher than in 2023, which now stands as the third best year in the viewers of the tournament.
The same generation as Clark was the game after the furrow was still showing dynamics. When Watkins is missing in the rest of this tournament, as big as it is, there is no reason to think that sport is not strong enough to continue.
Because this question is not new.
Many forget that before Clark captivated the country, Paige Bueckers did the same. Star Uconn as a newcomer, won the national player of the year in 2021 and became a early darling of the era of the name, image and similarity. Then she torn the ACL and missed the whole season and left questions about how sport would last without a new miracle that filled the arena.
In Buecker’s absence, Clark and Angel Reese appeared and overflowed with this emptiness to bring even more interest in the game and push sport into higher horizons and culminate one of the most epic clearing of the tournament history. Last season, an undefeated campaign in South Carolina was led by coach Dawn Staley, who is one of the most influential characters in sport. Gamecocks were tested by Clark’s dazzling displays, bringing viewers an assessment of spectators that covered the high standards of 2023.
When Bueckers was out, Clark and Reese replied. Bueckers did the same after Oregon’s Sabrina Ionesca went to Wnb. And the fans were similarly skeptical about the lack of stellar power when Maya Moore graduated to Uconn.
The female game has appeared again and again – especially in these last few seasons – that it will produce. The shining appears and attracts basketball fans.
Perhaps the answer is not as obvious as the best player of the nation led the reviving program with national monitoring and immediate recognition on the way to see.
Like the reaction Clark, Moore and others inspired them, coaches were also harassed and tried to stop them, but appreciated what they did for the game. Sometimes it is easier to see growth from the inside.
If there is a coach that can confirm the value of players such as Watkins and their impact on sport, it is UConn’s Geno Auriemma. He saw more phenomena close to anyone than anyone else, many who have become so loved ones that could only refer to their first names (or initials): Sue, Dee, Maya, Stewie.
When ESPN’s broadcasting packed its coverage on Monday from the second round of Uconn after the Bueckers scored 34 points, Auriemma sat in Storrs for an interview. He was asked to quickly answer that broadcasting could turn into the state game USC-Mississippi starting on the west coast.
“Oh, man, get out of me right now, let’s go to her. I want to watch her game,” Auriemma said with a smile. “Juju comes here. Give me some Juju! … to you, Juju, he’ll take it!”
Geno calculated the broadcast and then threw it Juju to tell her to “take over” >>>> pic.twitter.com/a2sto3eh2a
– Tyler deluca (@tylerdeluca) March 25, 2025
Coaches respect great players; The game respects the game. (If only the other one had some mercy on his knees.)
What to do next? Who now?
This will be decided next two weeks. But if the past tells us something, it is that the female tournament will bring. The most elite talent is still in the game. Each seed no. The reflector is trained back to Bueckers and as the previous tournaments taught us, even occasional viewers will become a new fan of the best players of the game. Hannah Hidalgo Notre Dame, Flau’jae Johnson of LSU and Lauren Betts from UCLA have been exemplary throughout the season and new young players are ready to surprise us.
The show continues in Spokane and Birmingham. Nets will be cut. The new stars will be made and crowned and the more famous stars exceed the heavier loads.
USC without watkins is not the same as once, or a tournament without watkins. However, the greatest evidence of Watkins’s size and stellar power is that even in its absence, the sport that helps build will continue to grow.
(Photo: Justin Casterline / Getty Images)
