PORTLAND, Ore. — The first and only time Paige Bueckers interacted with JuJu Watkins, they sat courtside at a Nike high school all-star event this summer, two humble titans of women’s basketball trying to assert their hold on the game.
Different vantage points, although they watched side-by-side that day. Same mentality. They traded tales of life lived, of different obstacles in their way, the elder Bueckers not so much imparting wisdom as active-listening. Watkins, entering her freshman year at USC after a much-hyped recruitment at Sierra Canyon, gave her thoughts on entering the college game. Bueckers, entering a redshirt junior year at UConn after a devastating ACL tear wiped out her 2022-23, gave her thoughts on rehabbing her knee.
“From that conversation, you can tell she’s got a good head on her shoulders,” Bueckers recalled of meeting Watkins, on Sunday morning. “She’s humble and hungry, and you could tell from that conversation that she wanted to make an impact right away and put her presence on the college game as a freshman.”
Their paths will intertwine again Monday night, top-seeded USC (29-5) taking on third-seeded UConn (32-5) at the Moda Center in a titanic Elite Eight matchup Monday night. Each has made the statement they’d once hoped for, sitting back in that courtside seat in New York. Watkins has stamped her claim as the next face of the women’s game; Bueckers didn’t let heartbreak beat her, a former freshman game-changer proving consistent dominance in a return from a season-ending injury.
It’s a one-on-one matchup, on the surface, that promises to dazzle. Watkins, the unrelenting force of nature who won’t flinch at a missed jumper, an impossible puzzle to contain. Bueckers, the hyper-efficient assassin similarly capable of winning a game in a variety of ways. On a day that already presents a rematch of Iowa-LSU up in Albany – and Caitlin Clark-Angel Reese – it’s a massive draw for the broader women’s game.
“It’s going to crush everything,” USC head coach Lindsay Gottlieb said to media Sunday, smiling at the viewership potential. “I think we would all tell you, right, it’s USC against UConn, and it’s LSU against Iowa. But star power drives narratives in athletics. It’s why the NBA took off, you know, when there were faces to it, going all the way back to Magic and Larry and Michael Jordan.”
Deeper, though, the Bueckers-Watkins parallel is reflected within a matchup of two of the most buzz-worthy programs in the women’s game. UConn, the gold standard, arguably the preeminent program in women’s basketball for the last 30 years. USC, tightly-clutching an underdog’s mentality, freshman Watkins leading these Trojans to a return to prominence and their first Elite Eight berth in 30 years.
“One player, one coach can make a difference,” UConn coach Geno Auriemma reflected on USC Sunday. “Here they are, and here we are.”
“I wish we could both win,” he continued, “but we can’t.”
The first and hardly last time Gottlieb interacted with Auriemma, she was a high school kid in Scarsdale, New York, and Auriemma was trying to badger her for a commitment to UConn.
Not from her. From her best friend Hilary Heick.
In those days in the mid-1990s, Heick – formerly Hilary Howard – recalled, UConn didn’t recruit a lot of kids. So if Auriemma wanted you, he wanted you. All-in. And he knew Gottlieb was Heick’s best friend, so he’d try to “charm up Lindsay,” as Auriemma put it Sunday. Didn’t work. Heick picked Duke.
“I hope she doesn’t hold it against me that I didn’t think she was good enough to play for us,” Auriemma said, dryly, of Gottlieb on Sunday. “She did all right.”
When Gottlieb took Cal to the Final Four in 2013, she was sitting next to legendary coach Auriemma at an honorary dinner where coaches were sized for rings.
Lindsay, Gottlieb remembered Auriemma cracking some version of, can really enjoy this when she’s at her 10th.
She has a chance at her second with a win Monday, and her journey has collided again with veteran Auriemma’s, just as Watkins’ has collided with Bueckers’. One the rising upstart. Once the established powerhouse. Both coaches trying to game-plan against a singular, game-breaking talent.
Bueckers, stoic as ever, brushed aside any notion she’d take on the Watkins matchup defensively – “I leave it to the game-plan,” she said after UConn’s win over Duke Saturday night. Gottlieb, however, told USC senior McKenzie Forbes on Sunday morning that she and Watkins would both spend time guarding Bueckers, Forbes told the Southern California News Group Sunday. It seems inevitable that the two will trade blows, hyper-competitive defenders with size and quickness to match up.
Auriemma’s coaching philosophy, he explained thoughtfully Sunday, was simple: what does an opposing team have that UConn would have a problem with? And it’d dawned on him, simply, that Watkins was a problem that he simply might not be able to solve.
And then it dawned on him, too, that Bueckers was a problem USC might not be able to solve.
“That’s what makes the game such a beautiful, intriguing expectation, is that maybe neither of us are going to solve the problem, and maybe some of the other players on each team are going to end up being the difference,” Auriemma explained.
