USC women’s basketball coach Lindsay Gottlieb took the podium at the Sweet 16 of the women’s NCAA Tournament on Friday for the first time since JuJu Watkins sustained a season-ending knee injury.
The fourth-year Trojans coach wanted to clear up a piece of business: there was no ill-intent by Mississippi State and Bulldogs guard Chandler Prater on the play that resulted in Watkins’ injury.
‘A 100% no. There was no intent to injure anybody,’ Gottlieb said Friday at Spokane Arena ahead of USC’s Sweet 16 game on Saturday.
Watkins, one of women’s basketball’s biggest stars, went down with a knee injury in the first quarter of USC’s second-round win against Mississippi State on March 24 while heading down the court at the Galen Center in Los Angeles on a fast break opportunity. As Watkins made her way to the paint, she got tied up with Prater and immediately fell down to the ground, showing an immense amount of pain.
Watkins was then carried off by members of USC’s medical staff, and taken to a nearby medical center for further testing. Shortly after USC’s win over Mississippi State, it was reported that Watkins would miss the remainder of the Trojans’ March Madness run.
As noted by The Clarion-Ledger, part of the USA TODAY Network, Mississippi State and Prater have received negative backlash on social media after Watkins’ injury. Mississippi State coach Sam Purcell condemned the backlash his players were receiving after the game during his postgame news conference. Gottlieb echoed those sentiments on Friday.
‘It was a physical game,’ Gottlieb said. ‘No one deserves online bullying in any realm, but certainly not a young woman in Chandler, who was trying to make a play, and unfortunately our player got hurt. But there was nothing to me that looked like it had any intent to hurt her. … That’s not a USC view at all.
‘We have really passionate fans, and there’s a lot of love for JuJu. I understand people being sad, you know, and hurt that she’s hurt, but nobody in our camp feels like there was any type of attack on her and would not support any type of online bullying or things of that nature. She’s a young person that was playing basketball too, and I’m sure did not want any part of a negative situation that it turned out to be.’
Watkins is expected to undergo surgery and be out for the majority of the 2025-26 season, as the sophomore guard rehabs. USC has not confirmed ESPN’s Shams Charania’s Monday report that Watkins tore her ACL.
USC is scheduled to tip off at 8 p.m. ET on Saturday against No. 5 Kansas State. The winner advances to the Elite Eight against the winner of No. 2 seed UConn vs. No. 3 seed Oklahoma.
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