NCAA women’s tournament reaches the Sweet 16 as one of its biggest stars falls

The Sweet 16 is set for the women’s field in the NCAA basketball tournament, but not without a pall that was cast after an injury to one of college basketball’s biggest stars.

Southern California sophomore guard JuJu Watkins, a first-team All-American and the Big Ten Player of the Year, crashed to the floor in the Monday night game’s first quarter against Mississippi State and grabbed her knee while down. Watkins had to be carried off the floor at the USC Galen Center with the game halted at the 4:43 mark.

“I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t rattled, seeing JuJu on the floor and crying,” said USC coach Lindsay Gottlieb.

The university released a statement saying Watkins suffered a season-ending injury and will undergo surgery.

When play resumed and the No. 1 seeded Trojans leading, 13-2, they opened up their lead and easily handled MSU, 96-59.

Watkins, the second-leading scorer in NCAA Division I with a 26.6 scoring average, was looking for her first field goal at the time of the injury. She had three points, all from the free throw line. Senior forward Kiki Iriafen paced USC in scoring Monday night with 36 points.

USC will travel to Spokane, Wash., for the regional semi and play fifth-seeded Kansas State on Saturday at 8 p.m. ET.

But without an important component.

Iowa feels the after-effects of Caitlin Clark’s departure

A season after Caitlin Clark carried the Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball program to unprecedented heights, a runner-up finish in the 2024 NCAA women’s basketball tournament, there were reminders that Caitlin wasn’t around anymore.

It was emphatic with the Hawkeyes’ season-ending loss, 96-62, in the second round Monday at Oklahoma. Granted, the Sooners are the fourth-highest scoring team in Division I (85.1 points per game), but never while Clark was with the team did the Hawkeyes have a losing margin as large as 34 points.

Under first-year head coach Jan Jensen, formerly a Hawkeye assistant and promoted after the retirement of Lisa Bluder, there were other potholes in the post-Clark era, such as a five-game losing streak during the Big Ten season. But the Hawkeyes surged down the stretch with 10 wins in their last 13 games before the NCAA tournament and earned a No. 6 seeding.

“It took us a while to put it in the rear-view mirror, a lot of the questions about Caitlin and company,” said Jensen after the OU loss.

The third-seeded Sooners, meanwhile, advanced to play the second-seeded UConn Huskies in one of the tournament’s most appealing matchups on Saturday at 5:30 p.m. ET in Spokane, Wash.. The Huskies played the last game of the season on their home court at Gampel Pavilion and cruised past South Dakota State, 91-57.

UConn standout Paige Bueckers scored 32 points to equal her career high and help the Huskies reach the Sweet 16 for their 31st straight season.

Bueckers, a senior guard, knows what it’s like to be sidelined by a knee injury. She returned in the fall of 2023 from a torn ACL that kept her off the court for all of the 2022-23 season.