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No. 1 ladies’s basketball recruit Juju Watkins, who grew up 10 miles from the USC campus, signed her nationwide letter of intent on Tuesday with the Trojans.
Watkins, who picked USC over finalists South Carolina and Stanford, is a two-time gold medalist with USA Basketball, a defending California state champion at Sierra Canyon Excessive Faculty and the state’s reigning Gatorade Ladies Basketball Participant of the Yr.
The 17-year-old, who grew up in Watts, is in line to affix a listing of USC legends — basketball legends — who grew up within the Los Angeles space, together with Cynthia Cooper-Dyke, Cheryl Miller, Lisa Leslie and Tina Thompson.
“I did not need to rush this course of,” Watkins stated. “Lots of people in my class had already dedicated earlier than me, and I positively was taking my time. However I need to make certain it was 1000 % the place I wished to go.”
Watkins joins Malia Samuels, a 5-6 guard from Seattle’s Garfield Excessive Faculty, in coach Lindsay Gottlieb’s 2022-23 recruiting class. Samuels is the No. 49 prospect within the 2023 espnW 100.
Watkins, a flexible 6-foot-2 guard, averaged 24.5 factors, 10.3 rebounds, 3.2 assists, 2.8 steals and a couple of.0 blocks final season for Sierra Canyon en path to the state title. Final summer season, she began all seven video games as a member of the USA Basketball Ladies’s U17 Nationwide Group and averaged a team-high 13.1 factors, 6.4 rebounds, 2.4 assists and a couple of.3 steals.
Watkins turns into the third top-10 recruit to signal with USC since espnW began its nationwide rankings in 2007, becoming a member of No. 7 Jordan Adams in 2012 and No. 8 Aaliyah Gayles in 2022.
USC hasn’t received a nationwide championship because it went back-to-back in 1983 and 1984. It final received a convention title in 1994 and the convention event in 2014. However its checklist of alums are as adorned as these from any college: Cooper-Dyke, a two-time NCAA champion, four-time WNBA champion and former USC coach; Miller, a two-time NCAA champion, three-time Naismith Participant of the Yr and this system’s all-time main scorer; Leslie, a Naismith Award winner, four-time Olympic gold medalist, and two-time WNBA champion; and Thompson, the primary faculty participant drafted into the WNBA, its second-leading scorer all-time and a four-time WNBA champion.
Watkins is now poised to affix the Trojans’ legendary L.A.-to-USC beginning 5.
Rising up in Watts, California, Watkins began enjoying basketball on the age of seven regardless of her mother and father’ need for her to play tennis like Venus Williams and Serena Williams. Daily, she’d observe along with her mother and father, Sari and Robert, within the yard or on the Watts gymnasium named after her great-grandfather, Ted Watkins Sr., a civil rights activist within the Sixties.
Earlier than her junior 12 months in highschool, Watkins transferred from Windward in Los Angeles to Sierra Canyon in Chatsworth, California and joined head coach Alicia Komaki’s championship group. At Sierra Canyon, Watkins rapidly discovered success and fame. Regardless of the varsity boasting well-known final names like James and Kardashian, Watkins turned her personal celeb and helped fill the stands throughout the 2021-22 women’ basketball season.
In February 2022, she turned the primary highschool athlete to signal with Klutch Sports activities Group for NIL illustration. This October, Watkins finalized an NIL endorsement cope with Nike, alongside Sierra Canyon classmate Bronny James, Iowa level guard Caitlin Clark, Stanford guard Haley Jones and prime 2023 guard D.J. Wagner.
“Juju has been within the nationwide highlight since seventh grade,” Komaki stated. “When she first got here to Sierra Canyon, she knew that she carried a reputation along with her and he or she understood that. She understood her accountability to the sport due to who she is. And when she performs in faculty, she’ll do the identical factor. The identify on the entrance will probably be simply as essential because the identify on the again.”
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