Over the summer, USC Trojans coach Lindsay Gottlieb scheduled a Zoom with her seven incoming freshmen and their families. The program was fresh off its best season in decades, led by star JuJu Watkins, who’d just taken them to the Elite Eight for the first time since 1994. Gottlieb wanted her newcomers to know that should be only the beginning. “The bar has been raised,” she told her freshmen class. It was their job now to help meet it.
They did not imagine doing it like this. But less than a week after National Player of the Year contender Watkins was ruled out for the tournament with a torn ACL, that freshman class sent No. 1 seed USC back in the Elite Eight, winning 67–61 over the No. 5 seed Kansas State Wildcats. This is not the same team as it would be with Watkins. But it’s out to prove that it can still be a very capable one. That’s due in large part to its gang of freshmen.
“We recruited this group to play,” Gottlieb said. “Above all else, we recruited winners. I do think these guys came because they were attracted to this idea of a competitive mindset and playing with other really good players with the ultimate goal of being in big-time games.”
Saturday gave them a chance to show that. USC’s first game without Watkins had been a showcase for senior transfer Kiki Iriafen. The forward scored 36 points and showed one blueprint for an offense that could function without the presence of Watkins: The Trojans could run as much as possible through Iriafen in the paint. But it was not possible to use that formula again when facing Kansas State. The Wildcats have one of the best posts in the country in 6' 6" senior Ayoka Lee, and she led a frontcourt attack that made it difficult to get anything going for Iriafen, who finished with just seven points. It was her lowest scoring performance in a full game all year.
That was a situation that might have easily spelled tournament disaster for the Trojans even if they had Watkins. Yet with their leading scorer at home awaiting surgery and their second-leading scorer hampered by a stout defense, they jumped out to an early lead, and managed to hold onto it for much of the night. That was primarily a product of the freshmen.
The No. 1 recruiting class in the country is led by a trio of guards in Kennedy Smith, Avery Howell and Kayleigh Heckel. The three of them have been close since meeting last year as high schoolers at the McDonald’s All-American Game. (That’s a statement of how far the program has come in and of itself: USC went years without even one McDonald’s All-American, period, let alone three in the same year.) Only Smith has started regularly so far on this stacked, deep roster at USC. But they have grown increasingly comfortable on the floor over the last few months. Their production made all the difference against Kansas State.
Both Smith and Howell matched their career scoring highs with 19 and 18 points, respectively, and Howell added eight rebounds and four steals. Heckel contributed eight points and three rebounds in 24 minutes.
“It falls back on our preparation that we’ve done all season,” Howell said. “I think that the experiences we’re getting through practice and the game situations we’ve been in, I think that it just carries over to these moments.”
The game ahead is one that had been circled on the bracket since the beginning for USC. The Elite Eight holds for them No. 2 seed UConn, the same team who pushed them out of this very round last year, a matchup that was always going to be difficult even with a healthy Watkins. An early-season rematch here was a narrow win for the Trojans: Watkins led all scorers with 25 points. They will now be tasked with doing that again, this time without her.
USC has made an effort to keep Watkins’s presence visible. On Saturday, the players wore shirts bearing her face, they placed a Funko Pop in her likeness on the bench, and they FaceTimed her from a celebratory locker room. They have all reiterated there is no replacing Watkins. (Among the leading scorers in the country, she has a sense of gravity on the floor that is hard to match, and she does not have to be near the ball to shape the action.) But the Trojans hope there can be some potential to recreate her in aggregate. Perhaps from a group of freshmen.
More March Madness on Sports Illustrated
This article was originally published on www.si.com as USC’s Freshmen Step Up in JuJu Watkins’s Absence to Take Down Kansas State.