LOS ANGELES (AP) — JuJu Watkins went down with a season-ending knee injury five minutes into Monday night's game. Top-seeded Southern California kept going without its star player, pummeling Mississippi State 96-59 to reach the Sweet 16 of the women's NCAA Tournament for the second straight year.
Watkins scored three points on free throws before injuring her right knee. The crowd went silent as she writhed in pain and clutched her knee while her teammates looked on helplessly and coach Lindsay Gottlieb rushed to her side. Watkins was carried off the floor by multiple people.
Her teammates were terrific in her absence. They kept their poise while building leads of 28-8 after one quarter, 50-27 at halftime and 75-42 after three. The Trojans hit buzzer-beaters to end each of the first three quarters and they celebrated by jumping around on the court.
Kiki Iriafen, a Stanford graduate transfer, scored a season-high 36 points on 16-of-22 shooting and grabbed nine rebounds. She left with 6:29 remaining and the crowd chanting, “Kiki! Kiki!” Freshman Avery Howell added 18 points, hitting four 3-pointers.
“What a performance by this group,” USC coach Lindsay Gottlieb said. “You never want anyone to go down, especially someone like JuJu that we all lean on in so many ways, but this team rallied. They rallied for her, they rallied for each other, our fans had our back. I'm just really proud and I think we showed what kind of team we are.”
The Bulldogs were led by Jerkaila Jordan with 17 points.
“My prayers and thoughts are with JuJu,” MSU coach Sam Purcell said. “I'm hoping the best for her because she's special.”
The Trojans (30-3) were up 34 points in the third. Their fans loved it, getting on their feet and roaring, especially when Iriafen waved both arms in the air, urging them on.
“It's hard when you have such a key player not with you,” Iriafen said. “For us, it was just making sure we got the job done. We want our season to be extended.”
Mississippi State couldn't handle the bigger Trojans, who instead of being deflated without Watkins seemed hell-bent on punishing their opponent.
The Bulldogs (22-12) had more than just the Trojans to contend with. The home crowd, angered by the loss of one of the game's biggest stars, booed every time MSU touched the ball and their cheerleaders heard it, too, getting jeered during a halftime routine.
“It just shows how ride-or-die our fans are,” Iriafen said.
The victory keeps the Trojans on a potential collision course with Paige Bueckers and UConn in the regional final in Spokane, Washington. They got knocked out by the Huskies in last year's Elite Eight.
Losing Watkins early in the game gave the Trojans a chance to showcase their depth. They had five players in double figures, including three of their seven freshmen.
The Bulldogs are known for their defensive prowess, but USC forced them into 20 turnovers that led to 27 points for the Trojans.
The Trojans play fifth-seeded Kansas State (28-7) in the Spokane 4 regional semifinals on Saturday.
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Southern California guard JuJu Watkins (12) reacts on the floor after an injury during the first half against Mississippi State in the second round of the NCAA college basketball tournament Monday, March 24, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jessie Alcheh)
Southern California guard JuJu Watkins (12) reacts on the floor after an injury during the first half against Mississippi State in the second round of the NCAA college basketball tournament Monday, March 24, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jessie Alcheh)
The White House has released President Donald Trump's schedule for Monday. He will hold a press conference with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and then begin a weeklong trip to the Middle East. Trump will visit Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, though his most pressing regional challenges concern two other countries: Israel and Iran.
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The Department of Homeland Security says it is opening an investigation into a California program that pays money to some immigrants.
The Department said Monday that it had issued a subpoena to California’s Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants to obtain records about the program.
That California program was created when Congress in 1996 took away federal Supplemental Security Income assistance for legal immigrants in a welfare reform law.
According to the program’s website, it pays money to elderly, blind and disabled people in California who are not citizens. The website says the program is entirely paid for by California.
The Trump administration has targeted states and communities that it considers to be lax when it comes to immigration enforcement.
Fresh off a 90-day tariff rollback to hold talks with China, President Donald Trump said that on trade issues, the “European Union is in many ways nastier than China.”
Trump said while speaking on Monday at the White House that the EU would “come down a lot” on trade restrictions regarding the U.S., tearing into the longstanding ally. The U.S. president insisted that America has “all the cards” in trade talks with Europe because of the vehicles it buys from the continent’s automakers.
Trump said his executive order on pharmaceutical drug prices would mean that Europeans will have “to pay more for health care, and we’re going to have to pay less.”
The U.S. has a separate negotiating period on trade in which goods from the EU are being charged 10% import taxes.
Trump said that the U.S.-Israeli citizen was expected to be released by Hamas in the “next two hours” or “sometime today.”
“He’s coming home to his parents, which is really great news,” Trump told reporters at the White House shortly before he was scheduled to depart for a whirlwind visit to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and United Arab Emirates.
Trump credited his special envoy Steve Witkoff in helping win the release of Alexander, 21.
The president said that Witkoff, a New York real estate developer turned diplomat, knew “very little about the subject matter” but learned quickly.
“He has a special way about him,” Trump said of Witkoff.
President Donald Trump says he will likely speak with China’s leader Xi Jinping “maybe at the end of the week.”
That’s after negotiators from the U.S. and China meeting in Switzerland this weekend agreed to reduce tariffs for 90 days of talks. The import taxes on China imposed by the U.S. would still remain higher than when Trump took office at 30%.
Trump told reporters on Monday that the reduced tariff rates didn’t include tariffs on autos, steel and aluminum as well as the potentially upcoming import taxes on pharmaceutical drugs.
Trump said he also spoke with Apple CEO Tim Cook on Monday and he expected the tech company to make additional commitments to invest in domestic production.
Trump said the talks would be great for “unification and peace.”
Trump says the countries ended hostilities for a lot of reasons “but trade is a big one.”
Speaking at the White House on Monday, the president said the U.S. is already negotiating a trade deal with India and will soon start negotiating with Pakistan.
India and Pakistan reached an understanding to stop all military actions on land, in the air and at the sea Saturday in a U.S.-brokered ceasefire to stop the escalating hostilities between the two nuclear-armed rivals that threatened regional peace.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent praised the progress made in in trade talks with Chinese officials over the weekend and said he expects another meeting in a few weeks.
U.S. and China announced a 90-day pause on tariffs after the weekend talks in Geneva.
“We had a plan, we had a process and now what we have with the Chinese is a mechanism to avoid an upward tariff pressure like we did last time,” Bessent said on CNBC.
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller says the Trump administration is looking for ways to expand its legal power to deport migrants who are in the United States illegally.
To achieve that, he says the administration is “actively looking at” suspending habeas corpus, the constitutional right for people to legally challenge their detention by the government.
Such a move would be aimed at migrants as part of the Republican president’s broader crackdown at the U.S.-Mexico border.
“The Constitution is clear, and that of course is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion,” Miller told reporters outside the White House on Friday.
“So, I would say that’s an option we’re actively looking at,” Miller said. “Look, a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.”
Trump’s plan to change the pricing model for some medications is already facing fierce criticism from the pharmaceutical industry before he’s even signed the executive order set for Monday that, if implemented, could lower the cost of some drugs.
Trump has promised that his plan — which is likely to tie the price of medications covered by Medicare and administered in a doctor’s office to the lowest price paid by other countries — will significantly lower drug costs.
But the nation’s leading pharmaceutical lobby on Sunday pushed back, calling it a “bad deal” for American patients. Drugmakers have long argued that any threats to their profits could impact the research they do to develop new drugs.
The White House has released President Donald Trump's schedule for Monday. Trump is scheduled to hold a press conference with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the White House at 9:30 a.m. Trump says he’ll sign an executive order that, if implemented, could bring down the costs of some medications — reviving a failed effort from his first term on an issue he’s talked up since even before becoming president.
Shortly after, Trump will begin his weeklong trip to the Middle East. Trump will visit Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, though his most pressing regional challenges concern two other countries: Israel and Iran.
President Donald Trump is ready to accept a luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet as a gift from the ruling family of Qatar during his trip to the Middle East this coming week, and U.S. officials say it could be converted into a potential presidential aircraft.
The Qatari government said a final decision hadn’t been made. Still, Trump defended the idea — what would amount to a president accepting an astonishingly valuable gift from a foreign government — as a fiscally smart move for the country.
FILE - President Donald Trump speaks with reporters as he signs executive orders in the Oval Office at the White House, Feb. 10, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, file)
