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Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
What can JuJu Watkins expect after ACL tear? Paige Bueckers and others offer insight
USC star JuJu Watkins writhes in pain as her teammates try to help her during a win over Mississippi State in the second round of the NCAA tournament on March 24. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times) The first week after Paige Bueckers tore the anterior cruciate ligament in her knee in August 2022, the unanswered questions haunted the Connecticut star most. 'The first week was devastation,' Bueckers recalled Friday, two and a half years later. 'A sense of just hurt, disappointment, a why me sort of mentality, why now.' For Azzi Fudd, her Huskies teammate, the days after her two ACL tears were spent mostly in stunned disbelief. Advertisement '[You're asking yourself] like, why did this happen?' Fudd said. 'How did this happen?' Those same questions have surely been swirling around in JuJu Watkins' mind since Monday, when the USC sophomore star's right knee buckled beneath her during the first quarter of the Trojans' second-round win over Mississippi State. Watkins was carried to the locker room, and later an MRI would reveal that she sustained a torn ACL, according to a person familiar with the diagnosis not authorized to discuss it publicly. The injury not only ends her season just as USC's tournament run is beginning, but also will presumably require her to sit out well into next season. Read more: Plaschke: JuJu Watkins' knee injury cuts deep into the USC star and Trojans' title hopes It's unclear how long the recovery journey will be for Watkins, who is the latest of the sport's rising stars to suffer a season-ending knee injury. The timing of her injury is particularly devastating for USC, which is set to face No. 5 Kansas State in the Sweet 16 on Saturday night, and for women's college basketball, which stood to benefit greatly from having Watkins' starpower on the sport's biggest stage. Advertisement For USC, it means adjusting to life without the focal point of its offense, a Herculean task that Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma knows all too well. His Huskies had to adjust without Bueckers during the 2022 season, then Fudd during the 2023 season. Auriemma said the impact of Watkins' absence on the tournament was 'huge from a competitive standpoint.' But after going through similar experiences in the past, women's basketball's winningest coach said the best way for a team to recover is to 'move on and everybody just do a little bit more.' 'The danger sometimes is one or two people on the team start to want to be like JuJu,' Aueriemma said. 'I'll do all the things JuJu did. And then that takes them out of their character and they play worse.' There's just no way to fully replace the gaping hole that her absence leaves in USC's lineup going forward. But for Watkins, this first week will undoubtedly be the hardest to weather. After that, Bueckers and Fudd said they started to reframe their mindset around the injury. Connecticut's Paige Bueckers, left, guards USC's JuJu Watkins during the Elight Eight of the women's NCAA tournament in April 2024. (Steph Chambers / Getty Images) 'Then your motivation, your strength, your faith, peace kicks in [that] everything happens for a reason,' Bueckers said, 'and then surgery happens, and then you know that every single day that passes by is a day closer to you getting to play basketball again.' Advertisement It's going to be a while before Watkins approaches that point. The Times spoke to two orthopedic surgeons with extensive experience treating knee ligament injuries who spoke generally about the recovery process for female college basketball players. Both agreed that a normal recovery would presumably take between nine and 12 months. Where Watkins falls in that range could prove especially consequential for USC next season. Nine months would put her return in late December. A 12-month timeline would extend into the 2026 NCAA tournament; though, there's no guarantee Watkins would choose to play in that either. During the past decade, the process of determining when an athlete is ready to return to play has become more 'objective" and 'scientific,' according to Dr. Andrew Cosgarea, an orthopedic surgeon at Johns Hopkins. That's generally meant a more careful approach to bringing an athlete back. 'We've gotten much better at not just looking at it as a specific window, like, 'OK, nine months and now you're ready,'' added Dr. Gabriella Ode, an orthopedic surgeon at the HSS Sports Medicine Institute and team physician for the New York Liberty. 'There's going to be a lot of differences from person to person in that recovery process. There's nothing wrong even with a 12-month recovery. I want to be very explicit about that. There are many people who it takes 12 months.' Advertisement Read more: JuJu Watkins' season-ending injury casts shadow over USC advancing to Sweet 16 That was the case for both Bueckers and Fudd during their respective returns at Connecticut. Bueckers tore her ACL in August 2022 and was cleared by early August 2023, before making her debut in November. The first time Fudd tore her ACL in high school, she needed just nine months to return to the floor. When she tore the same ACL and her medial meniscus last November, it took her a full year to recover. Even still, it took Fudd time to find her footing early in this season. When USC traveled to Connecticut and took down the Huskies in late December, Fudd played just eight minutes and scored zero points, missing all four of her shots. Advertisement It's a delicate balance, bringing a star player back from serious injury. Female athletes, for various physiological reasons, are between two and eight times more likely to tear their ACLs, and that risk — in both knees — grows exponentially within two years of a previous ACL tear. 'Probably the worst thing that an athlete can do is go back when they're not ready,' Ode said. Read more: Why USC's JuJu Watkins is 'your favorite basketball player's favorite basketball player' Many athletes do eventually return from their ACL injuries stronger than ever, with hamstring and quad muscles fully fortified around their surgically repaired knee. That's the outcome the women's basketball community is expecting from Watkins. Advertisement 'She will come back better and stronger,' UCLA coach Cori Close said. 'I don't have any doubt she will look back on this and go, 'You know what, in the long term, it actually made me a better basketball player. And I grew a ton as a young woman.'' That's how Bueckers and Fudd both look back on their own experiences. But both know how difficult the road ahead will be for Watkins. Especially in the first week after the injury, with her team still in the tournament. 'We empathize for her, we've been there, and we know how much it sucks,' Bueckers said. 'But you don't get to be as good as JuJu if you don't have a great motor, a great work ethic, and she's going to attack this process just as she's attacked basketball, and just as she's great basketball, she's going to be great at this.' Get the best, most interesting and strangest stories of the day from the L.A. sports scene and beyond from our newsletter The Sports Report. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Forbes
22-03-2025
- Sport
- Forbes
Women's March Madness Tournament Structure Critiques
The women's tournament is properly on its way with blowouts and bracket breaking upsets ensuing left and right. However, leading into the tournament after the Selection Sunday show, several of the games most prominent coaches were frustrated with the seeding. When the bracket was revealed last Sunday, UCLA was awarded the overall No. 1 seed placing them firmly in Spokane regional allowing them to play closer to home and commute within their own time zone. This reveal was followed by South Carolina and Texas taking No. 1 seeds that plant them in the Birmingham regional and the University of Southern California taking the final No 1 seed on the Spokane side. When interviewed about this seeding, South Carolina's Dawn Staley was critical of not receiving the overall No. 1 based on the Gamecocks schedule. South Carolina played 19 quad one opponents going 16-3 in that schedule, a feat that Staley felt should have received more praise from the committee. Perhaps even more vocal, Lindsay Gottlieb, Southern Cal's head coach said, 'I never thought I would be a one seed and feel so disrespected.' Gottlieb went on to clearly express frustration on being the overall number four No. 1 seed. Perhaps Gottlieb is disappointed mainly because her regional path now includes going through UConn as the No. 2 seed and an Elight Eight matchup to get to the Final Four in Tampa. To no one's surprise, UConn's Geno Auriemmo was also extremely vocal on the decision-making of the committee. Similar to Staley, Auriemmo was critical over the strength of schedule played during the regular season and how it impacted seeding for the tournament, stating, "Maybe we [UConn] don't get the respect we deserve. If you can go 4-12 in your league and you can still make the NCAA Tournament and get an eight seed, does it matter what you do in the regular season?" Additionally, Auriemmo was on podcast Good Game with Sarah Spain this week where he situated structural issues within the women's tournament needs to fix. He brought up having the regional in Spokane causing teams to travel across three time zones and a lack of fans for east coast teams that travel to the west coast. Furthermore, Auriemmo noted that when women's teams get to the Elite Eight and Final Four they are given less days of rest between games than their men counterparts. Last year the Spokane regional was a hot topic and became noteworthy as hotel space was limited in the city causing many teams to stay across the Idaho border in Coeur d'Alene. Coeur d'Alene, long has a White Supremacy history and the University of Utah encountered racial harassment staying in the city for their regional games. It will be interesting to see this year if despite the regional being in Spokane yet again, if the NCAA has made changes to negate these issues and prioritize player safety. To follow along with coverage of the women's March Madness Spokane Regional starting next week, follow me on Twitter.
