Paige Bueckers vs. JuJu Watkins: How UConn, USC stars will maintain girls’s basketball in highlight

USC head coach Lindsay Gottlieb seen a stranger approaching. She thought perhaps she had spilled one thing and he was going to offer her a heads-up. As a substitute, he stopped close to their desk and paused.

“Hey, Coach,” he stated. “I believed it was you. I’ve gotta ask …”

She waited.

“Is JuJu actually 6 foot 2?” he requested.

Gottlieb laughed. She answered — sure, JuJu Watkins is listed at 6 toes 2 — then joked that it will depend on how a lot of Watkins’ iconic bun is counted. A giant guard within the even larger Huge Ten was an attractive prospect for this L.A. sports activities fan. Even in the summertime, he was eagerly anticipating the season, which can see USC — a group that appeared on nationwide networks simply thrice final season earlier than its postseason run to the Elite Eight — on ESPN, FOX, FS1 and NBC 9 instances earlier than the Huge Ten match.

He thanked Gottlieb, wished her luck and went on his manner.

The change felt oddly acquainted to Gottlieb, simply not as the pinnacle coach of USC, a program she took over in 2021 when it was a basement dweller within the Pac-12. As a substitute, it reminded her of experiences throughout two seasons as a Cleveland Cavaliers assistant, when insatiable NBA followers needed to interrupt down each potential matchup and second.

“For these of us who’ve actually adopted this sport for a very long time, we’ve recognized there have been nice gamers earlier than, we’ve recognized the good tales earlier than, however now to see the remainder of the world catch on and concentrate is actually cool,” Gottlieb stated. “You then add to it this type of place I’ve been thrust into, the place we’re one of many packages that has one in all these star gamers who’s getting a ton of this consideration. It’s an incredible duty. It’s an incredible alternative.

“None of it’s misplaced on me, that we’re form of within the apex of this second.”

Greater than 2,500 miles throughout the nation, UConn coach Geno Auriemma can relate. For practically 4 many years, a number of the best stars to play the sport have come by the Huskies’ health club. But the fanfare didn’t match what he noticed on the boys’s aspect.

Till now.

In early October, UConn introduced it had bought out its season ticket packages for the primary time for the reason that 2004-05 season, after Diana Taurasi received a nationwide championship as a senior.

That didn’t occur in the course of the Maya Moore or Breanna Stewart years, or after 111 straight wins or 4 straight nationwide titles. Not till now — Paige Bueckers’ ultimate season in Storrs.

“There are individuals who have by no means had an opinion which have an opinion now or they need to know issues that they by no means needed to know, however now they’re conversant in names and occasions that previously they wouldn’t suppose twice of,” Auriemma stated. “The die-hard followers, they will’t look ahead to the season to start out. However the informal fan has tuned in and obtained a sip of it, and now they’re intrigued.”

That groundswell of consideration for girls’s basketball is simple. Each quantity backs it up. Final season’s NCAA Event set viewership data, together with a title sport that drew 18.9 million viewers (besting the boys’s title sport by practically 4 million, one thing most followers assumed might by no means occur). Iowa star Caitlin Clark’s uncanny knack for the massive second and skill to nail brand 3s drew in hundreds of thousands, however these followers discovered different gamers, groups and video games to take pleasure in. Even taking Iowa’s NCAA Event video games out of the equation, final yr’s ESPN viewership rose 43 p.c throughout March Insanity.

Clark’s draw, in addition to Angel Reese’s at LSU, continued into the WNBA. Indiana Fever attendance and viewership numbers soared; the identical was true for Reese’s Chicago Sky. Once more, these new WNBA followers stayed for the opposite huge abilities.

Stars propel sports activities and leagues. They lure informal observers and convert them to die-hards. After Clark and Reese departed for the WNBA, there’s no letdown for faculty basketball stars serving to carry the game’s weight, however consideration shall be targeted on two.

Anchoring two coasts, two conferences and two nationwide title contenders are USC’s Watkins and UConn’s Bueckers. They’re enjoying at packages which are iconic in their very own methods and recognizable worldwide. They’re each elite — probably generational — and have the ball of their fingers greater than virtually anybody else.

Watkins is the reigning Freshman of the 12 months trying to resurrect the Trojans, who haven’t been related in her lifetime. She’s the hometown child who turned out stars like Kevin Hart, Saweetie, LeBron James and John Wall eventually season’s house video games. The smoothness to her sport and easy high quality make it look like she has by no means rushed on the ground, whether or not she’s pulling up from 3 or attacking the basket (or hitting a shot wherever in between).

Kevin Hart was in attendance to see JuJu Watkins and the USC Ladies’s Basketball group ✌️#ncaaw #fighton pic.twitter.com/31PLjQDknN

— WNBA Received Sport (@wnbagotgame) December 20, 2023

Bueckers, who received nationwide Participant of the 12 months as a freshman 4 years in the past, is in her ultimate season at UConn. Even with its vaunted legacy, few highschool gamers have been extra heralded coming into Storrs than she was. And but, in her fifth yr, a nationwide championship — of which UConn has received 11 — has eluded Bueckers. She’s a rangy guard with sufficient savvy inside that even when she performed the 4 final season, she was nonetheless named an All-American. A participant so assured that she trademarked her nickname, “Paige Buckets,” earlier than her sophomore season.

Watkins’ and Bueckers’ play, storylines and superstar, in addition to USC and UConn’s December assembly (a rematch of final season’s Elite Eight) are causes individuals, together with new followers, will tune in for girls’s hoops this season.

However in contrast to gamers earlier than them with those self same attributes, they’re competing at a time of unprecedented transformation.

Due to an investigation that uncovered grievous disparities in NCAA males’s and ladies’s basketball, the NCAA was pressured to speculate extra within the girls’s NCAA Event. Due to rising consideration, ESPN — the ladies’s NCAA Event media companion — anted up final yr and paid large cash for the media rights to broadcast the occasion. Due to NIL, gamers reminiscent of Bueckers and Watkins are recognizable exterior of ladies’s basketball circles, partnering with main firms like Nike and Gatorade. Watkins was noticed on the 2024 Cannes Lions Pageant, threw out the primary pitch at a June Los Angeles Dodgers sport and received the ESPY for Finest Breakthrough Athlete. Bueckers attended the U.S. Open, the place Frances Tiafoe and Coco Gauff shouted her out, sat entrance row at New York Vogue Week and was featured on the JumboTron at a Los Angeles Rams sport.

“There’s no boundaries on us, and due to that, you’re seeing expertise, you’re seeing teaching, you’re seeing fan assist, you’re seeing viewership — you’re seeing all of these issues,” South Carolina coach Daybreak Staley stated. “That is in all probability the most important motion in our sport in its historical past, and it couldn’t occur at a extra good time. … There are such a lot of individuals tuned in; we met the second.”

To proceed assembly that second, girls’s basketball wants the subsequent wave of stars. It wants groups with compelling storylines (Staley’s Gamecocks are an ideal instance as reigning champs coming again to repeat after an undefeated season), however it additionally wants people like Watkins and Bueckers, whose tales and journeys this season shall be as compelling as their play on the ground.

“It’s nice that we’ve got them as a result of it could be a disgrace to observe up the star energy of final yr after which not have the ability to add to it this season,” Auriemma stated. “We have to showcase these guys and these groups, and we have to play nicely. We have to give all these new individuals which are going to be watching one thing to be enthusiastic about so that they need to come again.”

If Bueckers and Watkins do what their coaches imagine, then new followers will definitely have causes to maintain tuning in and discovering their subsequent favourite gamers as soon as Bueckers and Watkins transfer on to the professionals.

Auriemma and Gottlieb, who’ve been round this sport for many years, know this second isn’t simply completely different; it’s lengthy overdue. What comes subsequent (or, actually, who comes subsequent) shall be what pushes the game ahead.

(Illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; High pictures of Paige Bueckers and JuJu Watkins: G Fiume / Getty Photographs, Brian Rothmuller / Icon Sportswire through Getty Photographs)