AfriPulse
It’s March 2025, and JuJu Watkins is on fire. The USC Trojans star guard—then a sophomore and largely considered the best player in women’s college basketball—has led her team to its deepest NCAA tournament run in decades. Watkins is fearless in the high-stakes, round two game against Mississippi State, driving down the court with her signature aggression and power on full display. Suddenly, her right knee buckles, and she hits the hardwood. The packed stadium grows quiet as her teammates gather around a tearful Watkins, writhing on the floor, grasping her knee. After a tense minute that feels like 10, she’s carried to the locker room. Her team goes on to win the game (and make it to the quarterfinals before losing to UConn). But for Watkins…well, time stood still as she was engulfed by pain—and denial.
“I mean, I could barely walk…but I was like, ‘Oh, this can’t be that bad,’” Watkins tells SELF. It turned out to be the dreaded torn anterior cruciate ligament, or ACL, an injury that women are three to four times as likely to sustain as men. Part of Watkins’ denial was simply the result of being 19 years old, plenty early in her career to bounce back stronger and young enough to be a bit naive. “It was my first injury, so I didn’t know what it would feel like to actually tear something,” she says.
But even when reality sank in, the sadness was short-lived. Not because Watkins wasn’t grasping the gravity of the situation—she would be sidelined for the remainder of that NCAA tournament and the entire current 2025-2026 season (it takes nine to 12 months, on average, to heal from an ACL tear). But rather because she could quickly “see my future past this injury, what I’ll be able to learn, how I’ll evolve,” she says.
It’s a testament to Watkins’ resilience, both on and off the court. It’s a trait you need to have as someone who rose quickly from middle school hoops to WNBA draft pick rumors. In season one of her NBC Sports docuseries “On the Rise: JuJu Watkins,” which just launched its second season in November, USC women’s basketball head coach Lindsay Gottlieb recalls first hearing the buzz about “this eighth grader JuJu Watkins, down in LA” when she was head coach at Cal. Years later, the prospect of coaching Watkins helped sway Gottlieb to leave the NBA for her role at USC.
What came next was what’s been coined the “JuJu Effect:” a record-shattering start to her college career that has more than quadrupled the number of fans at Trojans home games, followed by a flurry of NIL deals including what sources have described as one of the richest shoe endorsement deals in women’s basketball with Nike. A Superbowl commercial. A massive mural in LA. A State Farm ad: “You need good juju?!” Her court look went viral, with fans scrambling for intel on her signature bun. She scored the first professional makeup brand endorsement in women’s college basketball with NYX. Caitlin Clark even passed along her personal cell in case Watkins needed tips on managing being thrust into stardom. (Watkins will likely be eligible for the WNBA draft in 2027, based on current rules, and says she’s “excited for that chapter of my life.”)
When we chat, however, Watkins is humble, quick to point out the obvious shortcoming on her goal list: She hasn’t won a championship. I ask what she’s most proud of when she looks back at the accomplishments she has notched, and she says she’ll give me two answers: tangible and intangible. The former “has to be Naismith,” she says, referring to the 2025 Naismith Women’s College Player of the Year award: “I am always super grateful for individual awards, but that one in particular is something I’ve dreamt of since I was a kid.” And the intangible? “The resilience I’ve gained,” she says, “as both an athlete and a person.”
It’s an apt word choice in the context of her current status, rounding out month eight of her ACL recovery journey. Once she was able to “rearrange my mindset from being distraught to motivated” in those days post-injury, she says she was “ready to dive into this next phase.” Two weeks later it was time for surgery, and the following day she was in rehab.
Enthusiasm aside, the tedium of those first few weeks was tough. She spent them maneuvering around her apartment in crutches and “literally relearning how to bend and raise my leg,” she says. Then began the slow process of reactivating her leg muscles, like her quads and glutes, first by just flexing them while seated, next involving resistance bands and eventually isometric moves like wall sits and lunges. And these weren’t your run-of-the-mill 10- or 20-second holds. “We built up to a minute at a time, five sets, because of her ability, as an athlete, to withstand the fatigue and burning of the muscle,” Jason Park, PT, DPT, one of Watkins’ physical therapists and the director of performance physical therapy at MMVP, tells SELF. It was as grueling to Watkins as it sounds, if mostly because of the glacial pace. “I never realized how impatient I was until this injury,” she says, laughing.
By the second month, “my north star was just being able to drive again,” she says. She was getting stir-crazy in her apartment, and no offense to her parents, who stayed with her in those first weeks post-injury to help out, but she craved her independence. Instantly, I’m reminded that JuJu, the basketball phenom, is also JuJu, the college junior.
It’s what makes her unwavering commitment to rehab all the more impressive, Dr. Park says: “She’s taken it as seriously, if not more so, than athletes much older.” While mustering through those early days may have been a bit of a drag, each one counted as a step forward to Watkins, who approached them with the mental intensity she’s known for on the court.
Once Watkins hit months three and four post-injury, she could pour her physical energy into rehab too. She was able to start moving faster, jumping again, powering up in the weight room. And in the past couple months, short sprints and even some dribbling and shooting have also been on the table. “Whenever we’re doing anything active, I’m excited,” she says.
Her positivity and verve are palpable, even via Zoom. As Dr. Park puts it, Watkins has “this innate ability to find the win in any situation.” She was quickly able to see, for instance, that watching games from the sidelines this season, alongside Gottlieb, will allow her to strengthen her basketball IQ, Dr. Park says. She’ll also have more time this school year to rewatch tape and work on the mental side of the game, she points out.
“Of course, the FOMO will always be there,” Watkins concedes, softening for a moment. We’re talking just ahead of USC’s season opener, which is bound to bring up some sadness. But it’s mostly bittersweet, she adds, because “I’m still happy to be around basketball even if I’m not playing. And I’m going to stay true to my role on the team this year, which is being there supporting, cheering them on, and helping out in any way I can.” Case in point: Dr. Park recalls her charging up the stairs ahead of a recent conditioning session for the team, hauling all of her teammates’ water bottles and resisting declarations from an athletic trainer that she didn’t need to do that: “I want to carry the waters for my team,” she replied.
Looking ahead, Watkins also has a positive mindset about her return to the court for her senior year and picking back up where she left off, which she credits to “becoming confident in my abilities and having so much faith.” Not to mention, she’ll have the chance during rehab to spend time working on core fundamentals, like ball-handling and reading the defense, in ways she might not have been able to in a regular season, Dr. Park says. We can expect to see even more finesse on the court, an even more cerebral JuJu on the other side of this, he forecasts.
But if the time away has already given Watkins anything, it’s a reminder of the joy this game has always brought her—ever since she first walked onto a court as a tall-for-her-age kid with “athletic genes and a lot of energy” to blow. “Honestly, when I get back, I will just be so happy to play basketball,” she says. “I don’t know if I really care about things that could go wrong.” Though if you know Watkins, you also know she rarely misses a rebound.
Source: Self.com | Read the Full Story…
