Sophomore guard JuJu Watkins has what it takes to be the best player on a national championship-winning team.

But USC women’s basketball (26-2, 176-1 Big Ten) will need its other stars to shine to win the Big Dance. 

Watkins has proven throughout her career that she shines brightest in the biggest moments. In two games against top-five rival UCLA (27-2, 16-2) during the regular season, the sophomore totaled 68 points. 

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However, teams have caught on to that. USC’s opponents have started to double-team Watkins, doing their best to get the ball out of her hands. 

Teams can take one of two strategies against the Trojans. They can either double-team Watkins and make USC’s other players take control, or allow the guard to single-handedly beat them and play honest defense.

While the Bruins opted for the latter decision, other top teams have decided to get the ball out of Watkins’ hands. The No. 13 Ohio State Buckeyes (24-5, 13-5) did lose to the Trojans by 21, but it was not because of Watkins.

The star guard shot an inefficient 5-for-21 from the field against the Buckeyes, notching 17 points and 10 rebounds. With poor play from Watkins against the sixth-best Big Ten defense in points for play, it was graduate forward Kiki Iriafen who won it for USC with her 24 points. 

That has often been the case for the Trojans, with Watkins leading USC in scoring, either outright or tied for the lead, in 22 games and Iriafen leading in seven games. The duo co-led the team in scoring in two games, meaning there was only one game throughout the regular season where Iriafen or Watkins did not lead the team in scoring.

Iriafen has been inconsistent from the field this year, shooting worse than 45% from the field 12 times throughout the year despite playing almost entirely in the post. Her worst performance came in the first game against UCLA, when she went 4-for-14 from the field and only mustered 13 points. Watkins, comparatively, put up 38 points on 12 of 26 shooting.

The younger star was about to overcome Iriafen’s poor play in USC’s first matchup against the Bruins, but someone will have to step up and complement Watkins when she has a bad game against a top team.

That was on display last season throughout the NCAA tournament when the Trojans finally fell in the Elite Eight to UConn. While Watkins put up 29 points against the Huskies, certainly not a bad outing, she missed 16 shots in the process. Then-graduate guard McKenzie Forbes also had a nice performance with 24 points, but she only made five of her 15 3-point shots.

Forbes was pivotal for USC last season — she scored 26 points against Iriafen’s old Stanford team to win the Pac-12 Tournament when Watkins only had 9 points — but both Forbes and Watkins are guards.

Often, teams will be able to defend guards well but leave post players to have their way, while other squads will have the opposite problem and guard forwards and centers well but are vulnerable to guard play.

Last season, USC’s best two players were both guards between Forbes and Watkins. The advantage the Trojans possess this season is that Watkins is a guard and Iriafen, their second-best player, is a forward. Where a team could guard Watkins and Forbes last year, it might be more difficult to guard both Watkins and Iriafen given they play at different levels.

Given Iriafen’s inconsistencies, however, the Trojans also need to rely on senior center Rayah Marshall. While Marshall was on the team last season — suggesting that her presence on the team this year should not be any different — she was forced to be USC’s best scoring threat down in the post.

Marshall and then-graduate forward Kaitlyn Davis were USC’s best post players last season, with Marshall working as the top dog as Davis only averaged 6 points per game. The senior’s scoring has dipped from 10.2 points to 7.4 points, with Iriafen picking up the scoring slack. 

The senior, in her fourth season with the squad, is averaging a career-high 2.4 assists per game this year. That does not seem high to the naked eye, but it is a nearly one-assist-per-game jump from her previous career high.

With Iriafen down low with her, Marshall can dump it off to her post counterpart if the opposing team has solid defense on the interior. Marshall will never be USC’s leading scorer — her season high this season is 15 points and fans should hope that she’s not the leader with those numbers — but she is so vital to a winning formula for the Trojans.

Watkins will get hers offensively during the Big Ten and NCAA tournaments, averaging 27.5 points in the Big Dance last year to outpace her 27.1-point season average, but that clearly wasn’t enough to win a national championship in 2024.

The Trojans need a star to complement Watkins and while Forbes was solid last year, Iriafen is a step up given she plays a different position and won the Katrina McClain Award in 2024, given to the best power forward in the nation.

USC does not win a national championship without consistently strong performances from Watkins. But heading into the postseason, Iriafen and Marshall will be the keys for USC.

Thomas Johnson is a senior writing about USC’s arrival to a new conference and all of the implications surrounding the entrance in his column, “Big Ten Bites,” which runs every other Wednesday.