UConn women’s basketball head coach Geno Auriemma is no stranger to seeing elite players fall to injury and had empathetic words to offer USC women’s basketball head coach Lindsay Gottlieb after star JuJu Watkins went down with a season-ending ACL tear. “I feel terrible for JuJu personally, knowing the players I’ve had that had to go through that,” Auriemma told Gottlieb, according to UConn Women’s Basketball Weekly’s Daniel Connolly. “The USC kids will probably rise to the occasion and play amazing like they did the other night.” Gottlieb had a similar message in the locker room for the Trojans the night of Watkins’ injury, encouraging her squad for their path forward in the tournament. “Grateful you guys had my back, you had each other’s back, you had Ju’s back. The fans had your back. We were a team,” Gottlieb said in a video the women’s NCAA March Madness social media account shared on X. Watkins will miss the rest of the NCAA Tournament after leaving USC’s second-round victory over Mississippi State early into the first quarter. The Trojans went on to have a dominant showing against the Bulldogs en route to a 96-59 blowout and Sweet 16 berth, with standout forward Kiki Iriafen admitting Watkins was on their mind. Auriemma notably had to deal with big blows to stars in his own lineup. Both Paige Bueckers and Azzi Fudd suffered major injuries that caused them to miss extended periods of playing time, including back-to-back ACL tears that took them out for all of 2022-23 and 2023-24, respectively. UConn even had to postpone a contest in 2023 due to a lack of available healthy players on the roster – a game that he himself was going to miss due to an illness. Watkins’ injury also deprives women’s college basketball fans of seeing a direct March Madness face-off between her and Bueckers in a likely Elite Eight matchup.