Feeling back like myself. JuJu Watkins returns

She’d been out for over a 12 months, her long, arduous recovery from a season-ending knee injury saved nearly fully under wraps. But as JuJu Watkins took her place in entrance of a microphone for the first time since returning to apply this summer season, the USC celebrity may barely include her gratitude.

Asked Monday what the best half about being back has been so far, a big smile crept across Watkins’ face.

“Honestly everything,” Watkins said. “Like I don’t even know, the smallest stuff just gets me excited.”

Watkins’ return is a momentous mile marker for a crew that has critical national title aspirations this season. Her standing stays unsure, and reporters in attendance Monday had been told not to inquire additional about Watkins’ particular recovery timeline. But Watkins did say that she’s already been in a position to scrimmage during USC’s summer season apply and that she’s “feeling back like myself.”

“It’s just been a long time coming,” Watkins said. “I’ve just been working out and grinding every day so that I could be in position, so to see all of that hard work pay off right now, it’s really fulfilling.”

Watkins was a two-time consensus All-American and the Associated Press Player of the Year in 2025, when her knee buckled that March during a breakaway in the second spherical of the NCAA match. The injury, a torn ACL, wouldn’t just derail a doable title run for USC that season, but also upend the Trojans’ trajectory for the next one.

Facing one of the hardest schedules in the nation, USC missed Watkins dearly. The Trojans completed their irritating marketing campaign 18-14 before dropping in the Round of 32.

As she sat out, Watkins said she struggled to keep still. Patience didn’t essentially come naturally. She discovered herself leaning on others, she said, like Dallas Wings level guard Paige Bueckers, who went through her own ACL recovery.

“She was constantly checking up on me, sending me texts, encouraging me,” Watkins said of Bueckers. ‘I really appreciated that.”

Coaches suggested she pour that energy into her teammates. So she took solace in doing the little things, like arranging the locker room chairs during pre-game.

“Just to watch her take something that was so difficult and pour herself into everything that went into last year was something I’ll never neglect,” coach Lindsay Gottlieb said. “I really do take a lot of inspiration from it.”

The silver lining, popping out of a season without their celebrity, was the emergence of freshman Jazzy Davidson, who got here to USC to play alongside Watkins. Instead, she ended up successful National Freshman of the Year and changing into a rising star in her own proper,

This month, Watkins and Davidson had been finally in a position to take the ground together, just as Gottlieb had once envisioned. She’d waited fairly a while for that pairing, she reminded Monday. But Davidson, she thinks, shall be all the better for having survived her freshman season without Watkins.

“You just come back with a different level of confidence,” Gottlieb said. “I hope she brings with her every experience she had because who had more experience than Jazzy in terms of a freshman year where she handled so much?”

Now, with Watkins back and Davidson set to take another step ahead, there gained’t be so a lot strain on the Trojans’ latest top recruit.

Saniyah Hall marks the third straight No. 1 general prospect to signal with Gottlieb and USC, but she steps into a decidedly different state of affairs than the other two did. In addition to Watkins and Davidson, the Trojans also introduced in two other top freshmen in Sitaya Fagan and Sara Okeke, as nicely as two precedence portal provides in Ryann Bennett and Pania Davis.

“With the talent that’s on the team,” Hall said, “I think it could be something that’s very special.”

That begins with Watkins, who, in spite of a 12 months away, apparently hasn’t skipped a beat in her return.

“I feel like she’s back like she never left,” guard Kennedy Smith said.