Juju Watkins and USC Have Got Next

All Art by Chris Wozniak (@wlohaty)

2023 Gatorade National Player of the Year, JuJu Watkins, made waves with her commitment to Southern Cal. In head coach Lindsay Gottlieb’s second season in Los Angeles, the Trojans won 20 games or more for the first time in half a decade, made the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2014, and appear set to find consistency with a rock solid foundation.

Watkins is someone I expect to have an immediate incredible impact. It’s not hyperbolic to say she has the talent and skill level to alter the trajectory of a program. Not only is she a collegiate game changer, but one of the most enticing pro prospects in recent memory, with the potential for these next few years at USC to take her from exciting prospect to surefire top draft pick. Nothing is ever set in stone when someone hasn’t even checked in for their first collegiate game, but JuJu bucks the trend.

What Makes Watkins a Special Prospect?

Athletic Profile

Athleticism sets the table in every sense for a pro prospect: what athletic traits do you embody? How athletically developed are you? Are you traditionally or functionally athletic?

JuJu ticks nearly every box as an athlete. She’s a fantastic leaper, huge in opening up efficiency around the rim. She’s laterally quick and fluid, essential for the defensive end and creating with the ball in her hands. She’s fast straight line with a quick first step. She’s well balanced. She has a lower center of gravity (important for playing through contact).

Watkins is an Elite athlete in nearly every sense. It will be interesting to see how she adds strength when looking at further development pathways, but it’s not a weakness, particularly with the ball in her hands.

When factoring in that she’s legitimately 6’2 with a significant wingspan… there just are not many human beings, let alone athletes, that are gifted physically like she is.

She’s the rare non-guard size basketball player that can play with fluidity and coordination, excelling in multiple planes of motion, without being off kilter.

Ball-handling

Especially with the proliferation of more spread out offense and “positionless” ideations, it becomes important to delineate baselines: AKA what are you doing that a defense has to respect even when you’re struggling?

Every player that can dribble isn’t a guard but a guard is a player that can dribble in that ever prescient rectangle/square analogy.

JuJu is a guard, both in principle and practice. Why?

You take everything mentioned with respect to athleticism, and combine that with a well equipped handle and ball skills. Getting into the paint to create offense is a significant chunk of what makes a player a guard, or at least an effective one.

There are countless players with great first steps that aren’t capable of really running offense or being a guard full time because they can’t blend downhill pop with savvy enough ball-handling: if you’re not a guard all the time, you are a guard none of the time.

She blends together that downhill shift with advancing change of pace skills and some additional East/West ability. She strings together multiple combinations, can play at a few levels with smoothness, and attack in complex motions. Again, at 6’2 with her athletic profile, we are talking about a rare class of people that have ever had that array of consistent skill.

When you pull together the massive strides JuJu has made in the last year as both a shooter and with her feel for the game, the full picture of who she is as a player is staggering.

What is feel? 

Feel for the game can be categorized in numerous ways, but for our purposes, let's define it as the blend of decision-making, court awareness, and timing. How quickly can you make the right play when you encounter a barrier? How quickly can you find solutions to an on-court problem?

JuJu has steadily improved in those regards since I first saw her playing last summer with the US U17 team at the FIBA World Cup. Her command of the court and ability to shift it to her advantage is on an upwards trajectory, making it that much harder to stop her, and that much more devastating when she's in rhythm in the halfcourt.

The release on her shot has quickened over the past year, making it easier to get off cleanly. She has fantastic ability to stop and pull her jumper when she has an opening; She always has to be guarded, and guarded tightly, as she's a constant threat.

She packs a punch with her (still growing) 3-level scoring gravity, and delivers counters with court vision and playmaking chops. The intersection of skill and size that JuJu brings is special and was on display during her first collegiate game yesterday against 7th ranked Ohio State. 

Staking a Claim

As was highlighted well last night, Watkins scored more in her USC debut than Lisa Leslie, which is just wild to soak in. The numbers are tantalizing, but it's the how of what JuJu did that kept running through my head last night.

Ohio State is not an easy team to have an early game against (Cough Cough, Tennessee last season); they play at a high pace, they play aggressive, they play a fairly different press, and they are hands down one of the most talented teams in the country. There are multiple future pros on this Buckeye squad, and while they didn't play to their standard last night, much of that had to do with the standard that JuJu and USC set.

First and foremost, so much credit has to be given to Lindsay Gottlieb and her staff for the roster they assembled this season. This group is built to maximize JuJu and fit cohesively. McKenzie Forbes and Kayla Padilla, both Ivy League grad transfers, are adept off the ball and know how to play in the flow. Kaitlyn Davis, another Ivy Leaguer, is one of the most versatile players in the country. She can handle at the 4 spot, pass from all over the court, screen, and just has a knack for making timely plays. That trio was massive last night and will be moving forward. 

If you want to unlock versatility, you have to HAVE versatility; you can run the most creative sets and schemes in the game, but if you don't have the skillsets to make defenses guard, it's moot. USC has the versatility with the transfers they brought in and what they add to the holdovers from last season's roster.

Part of what makes JuJu such an incredible player and prospect is the versatility she brings to the table. She is legitimately good at so many things and capable of attacking in a plethora of ways; can you defend them all? What can you take away?

Watching Ohio State toy with what to do last night, and the way JuJu still persisted, and evolved over the course of the game, the answer is not much.

JuJu scored her first bucket in transition after not getting picked up early. Ohio State counters, picking her up a few feet outside the three point line, and she veers left to take an early drag screen from Rayah Marshall (who was amazing in this game).

Marshall slips the screen as Taylor Thierry shifts to adjust for it to be fully set, giving JuJu that extra half-step to work with Thierry on her hip. OSU is playing a show and recover with their 5 (Rebeka Mikulasikova).

Watkins hits the breaks and pivots to hit Marshall in open space; bucket.

As a side note, I love how USC has Davis lift to the slot as Marshall rolls. I'm not sure if that's scripted or just a read by Davis (assuming read), but it adds an additional level of murkiness for the Buckeyes. Technically Davis and her defender, Cotie McMahon, are on the strong side, so tagging the roller isn't her job. But, where the screen is set and how (rolling with open hips to the strong side) is designed to pick apart traditional weakside help. That is an extremely awkward rotation for Jacy Sheldon, the weakside helper, to make. 

Davis making that extra lift with proper timing pulls McMahon away and essentially gives Marshall an empty corner look. 

This is great stuff, and the Trojans ran phenomenal sets and actions all game.

Dominating in Man to Man and Isolation

A few possessions later, a similar action, but this time, Davis clears to the weak side as JuJu and Marshall work in tandem above the arc.

You can point out that Marshall isn't a floor spacer and call for Mikulasikova to hang at the rim for help, but it's not that simple. This happens fast. JuJu gets the isolation with Thierry, hits the behind the back to attack her balance near immediately, and is getting to the rim in under a second and a half. It's hard to break scheme to make point saving plays when the offensive actions are hitting that quickly.

Just 3 minutes in, we're already starting to see that JuJu one on one might be a problem. Her strength, ability to absorb contact, and then finish through it is beyond her years and part of what makes her a star. There's a whole eventual world of foul-drawing we could talk about someday; she's drawing fouls because of the quickness in foot and in process.

One of the things that's been so cool to watch with JuJu's development over the past year is that development of quickness in attack. She's better at recognizing advantages and how to attack; cutting down the timing of recognition boosts how devastating her first step can be.

The game keeps progressing, and more and more eyes are becoming glued to JuJu by the defense.

Can't keep her out of the paint, and she'll find the open player, Marshall on the roll again,

As a side note, JuJu is so good with passes in her immediate vision. It will be interesting to see how she keeps developing as someone who can playmake more to side to side and operating with skips in time; that's something more on the intermediate horizon.

She started seeing double teams and more extensive pressure as the game went on and her poise and composure was impressive. If you want to quibble about hitting the roller overtop, she did that really well at Sierra Canyon last year, I think it's just going to take some time to adapt to D1 length, athleticism, and timing; that she's already here and handling things with the confidence she did yesterdays is ridiculous.

When we talk about that improvement in making advantages mean more, here's a prime example.

JuJu is tremendous coming off screens, incredibly fluid and nimble at her size; it's very hard to find like-sized defenders that can navigate through screens AND handle her strength and size on the perimeter as well. When you have that sort of coordination at that size with all of her other skills in tandem, every action and set in the book is in the palm of her hand.

The hesi and setup, the half beat to freeze the defender and then attack is so huge. Just last year, JuJu was more primed to attack straight away, and while that result in a ton of free throws and looks in the paint, it also led to some turnover tendencies and smothered looks as well. With some of the change of pace she not only flashed, but wielded yesterday, her paint touches and ball-handling reps hit that much harder, as they're more in control.

Watkins was primarily an off-ball wing scorer when she played for the national team, a scoring outlet, running off screens, and spotting up with some occasional secondary creation opportunities. At Sierra Canyon this past fall/winter, she spent much more time soaking up usage as a pick and roll ballhandler and primary initiator. 

If game one is any indication, we're getting a wonderful merge of the two from Southern Cal. Blending everything together to put a ton of motion into the offense is so big in keeping a defense in flux and preventing opposition from getting fully set.

The paths she takes off of screens are tighter and crisper; by minimizing space used to get to a point where you can attack/make a decision, you create more space.

JuJu starts on the wing, Padilla occupies strong corner, and Forbes clears to outside the arc to receive the ball. JuJu cuts hard across the free throw line to receive a screen (Iverson Cut), and then the pivot.....this is the stuff. 

You can't necessarily see how fats JuJu is going until you notice her stopping. That initial burst to get clear of Thierry leaves her in the dust, she opens back up to the inside and rips up as she attacks inside. By having her pivot off the cut, she 

• sees what's in front of her and can make a quick read/decision
• is inherently generating a little bit more space by cutting down the path before the catch. Typically and Iverson is going to clear to the slot entirely

The euro-step and touch on the fallaway are just nasty.

Shot Gravity

When you have a player that has the size to score on the interior, fluidity to come off of screens tightly, and the shooting ability to make them necessary to trail over, you can do a wild amount of things with them in the offense as hit on previously.

Just watch this as JuJu is chased and guarded by last year's ACC Defensive Player of the Year and one of the best perimeter defenders in basketball, Celeste Taylor.

JuJu does a great job on setting up her screen with the hard step, then comes off the next screen. Taylor darts in between, cutting the distance to prevent the lob overtop. JuJu cuts back, takes another screen and isolates.

She takes Taylor off the dribble, Marshall comes to set another screen, and JuJu instead darts to the interior with a push dribble before a snatch back to go up at an empty rim, and I just don't even know what to do with that to be completely honest.

She creates in a phone booth here, one that really shouldn't be available. She's scoring and creating because she's a star.

Ohio State did not have an answer. She was too big and quick to play one on one on the perimeter, and USC did a great job getting her those isolated looks. Letting her get into the paint was the last thing the Buckeyes wanted as time went on. McMahon goes underneath a screen for Watkins.

Bang! Watkins for 3.

SC ghosts a guard/guard screen for JuJu from the middle of the floor, Taylor stays in front and slides, but is bumped off.

Pull-up 2, cash.

SC even started to work in some post opportunities for JuJu, Taylor is fighting to deny the catch, Rikki Harris has to help underneath in-case the entry is made.

And then the Trojans are scoring off a wide open corner 3.

In her first game as a college athlete, Watkins dissected a team that brought back the majority of its Elite 8 roster, bolstering with transfers in the off-season as well. Her control and ability to dictate the game were breathtaking.

It's one thing to see a player look to create effectively in the halfcourt, it's another to watch them do so in a way that's so effective and backbreaking. This is legitimate pro style offense and efficacy in the late clock as Watkins finds a switch, pulls back to the top of the arc, receives a ghost screen, and creates out of the slight chaos.

Yesterday was the first game in what will undoubtedly be a special collegiate career for Watkins as USC builds upon a staggering game one of the 2023-24 season. 

The WNBA is built upon the ideas of offensive continuity and multiple ball-handlers and decision-makers. All you have to do is watch the WNBA Finals to see and get a sense of that. Even in just this past year after the Aces won their first title, rosters have shifted. Teams have gone to playing less double big looks and more 4 or 5-out approaches. 3 point numbers tend to get the focus, but the point is offensive continuity.

Having the ability to continually cycle and create good looks, make quick decisions, and attack with pace and efficiency is what pushes the game and drives the best teams.

JuJu Watkins has the makings of one of the most versatile scorers, playmakers, and basketball players we've seen, period. There are few players who have ever been built like her, few who can defend her, and while I can't predict what the future holds for her, I truly believe she's going to change the game and push USC to new heights.