Juju Watkins is staying home.

One of the top recruits in the class of 2023 announced her decision to play college basketball at the University of Southern California on Tuesday. Watkins grew up just 10 minutes from the USC campus, and her family, she said, was the main reason for staying close to home.

Watkins took great care with her decision, which she announced in front of her friends and classmates at Sierra Canyon.

“I didn’t want to rush this process,” Watkins told ESPN. “A lot of people in my class had already committed before me, and I definitely was taking my time. But I want to make sure it was 1,000% where I wanted to go.”

She chose the Trojans over current women’s basketball powerhouses South Carolina and Stanford, ranked No. 1 and No. 2 in the AP Top 25. USC is unranked.

With the Cardinal or the Gamecocks, Watkins would be stepping into a team that is already built for NCAA titles. With USC, she will be a part of the building process. In fact, Watkins will be the central building block for a historic Trojans program that hasn’t been in conversation with elite teams for quite some time.

But Watkins changes that, almost instantly.

There’s no place like home #fighton #committed pic.twitter.com/MWzIvONg58

— Judea (Juju) Watkins (@Jujubballin) November 15, 2022

“Juju is the best and most decorated player of her class both in the country and internationally, ” USC coach Lindsay Gottlieb said in a press release. “I could talk for days about her skill set: her shot-making ability, creativity to the rim, dominance on the boards, defensive tenacity and her elite court vision.

“But what I am most excited about is that JuJu the human being is joining the USC family. This is a young woman with transcendent talent, but she is also uniquely motivated. She is about things bigger than herself: her family, her team, her community, her city. Juju had the courage to stay home and is driven to bring USC women’s basketball back to prominence. What a monumental day for all of us in the Trojan family.”

USC was a powerhouse in the 1980s, with All-Americans Cheryl Miller, Paula McGee and Rhonda Windham leading the Trojans to an NCAA championship in 1983. They repeated the feat in 1984.

But recent women’s basketball history has belonged to teams like UConn and Baylor, as well as the last two teams competing with USC for Watkins – South Carolina and Stanford. The Trojans haven’t made an NCAA tournament since 2014, and after being a mainstay throughout the ’80s and most of the ’90s, USC has made just three March Madness appearances since 2000.

Watkins is the kind of talent that can transform a program — or in USC’s case, restore it to its former glory.

The 6-foot-1 guard has been called a generational talent after leading Sierra Canyon to a state title in her junior season with 24.8 points, 10.3 rebounds, 3.2 assists, 2.8 steals and 2.0 blocks per game, among other accomplishments, including playing for the United States U-17 and U-16 national teams.

Watkins is a versatile guard, which along with her obvious talent makes her the ideal player to build a team around. And Gottlieb is already working on finding pieces to surround Watkins. Four-star recruit Malia Samuels, a point guard from Seattle, joins Watkins in the class of 2023.

It’s also worth noting that nine players on the ESPN Top 100 recruiting list for 2024 are from California. And with Watkins staying home to play for the Trojans, she could encourage more players to join her in staying home.

US tennis star Coco Gauff continues to win off the court, with the 2025 French Open champion topping Sportico's list of the 15 Highest-Paid Female Athletes for the third consecutive year.

Fueled by $23 million in off-court endorsements, the $31 million earned by the 21-year-old world No. 3 WTA player edged out the $30 million total income that fellow tennis star and world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka garnered in 2025.

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Unsurprisingly, a full 10 athletes on the Sportico Top 15 list are tennis stars, a direct result of the fact that all four Grand Slams and the Masters 1000 tournaments boast equal prize money between the men's and women's competitions — a shift that began with the 1973 US Open.

That established expectation of gender equity in prize money has tennis far outpacing salaries in most other women's sports.

Also making the Top 15 are two LPGA golfers — world No. 1 Jeeno Thitikul (No. 15 on the Highest-Paid Female Athletes list) and US star No. 2 Nelly Korda (No. 7) — as well as popular Olympic skiier Eileen Gu (No. 4), WNBA superstar Caitlin Clark (No. 6), and USA gymnastics legend Simone Biles (No. 11).

Notably, Gu, Clark, and Biles as well as Venus Williams (No. 14) all proved the power of endorsements on this year's list, with nearly all of the quartet's earnings coming from sponsorship deals.

As WNBA CBA negotiations rage on, revenue sharing continues to be a wedge issue for both sides of the table, with the league office and the WNBPA eyeing the terms of the most recent proposal from differing viewpoints.

The Athletic reported on Wednesday that the WNBA believes it has offered the revenue-sharing salary model that the players have pushed for throughout the CBA talks, leaving athletes to claim 50% of the "sharable" portion of league revenue.

How the WNBA will determine the "sharable" cut is uncertain, though sources claim the compensation structure on offer will result in players taking home less than 15% of the league's total earnings.

That percentage is likely to take a further hit over the lifetime of a new CBA, according to the league's multi-year earning projections.

"I don't feel like there's any cultivation of a culture of trust [in the CBA talks]," WNBPA president and Seattle Storm star Nneka Ogwumike told The Athletic. "I feel like we've been heard, but not listened to, and I'm hoping that that changes in this 40-day extension, because what we want to do is get a good deal done."

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Parental leave, draft combine, and more enters the WNBA CBA talks

Along with the issue of revenue sharing, the latest WNBA offer also reportedly outlined other proposals, such as the institution of a required offseason draft combine, the elimination of team housing, and the possible extension of the competition calendar by starting earlier and/or finishing the season later.

As for the WNBPA's Tuesday counteroffer, the players union is seeking to eliminate the core designation and shorten the current four-year rookie contract to three years.

The WNBPA is also asking to add non-birthing parental leave, retirement benefits, and reimbursements for mental healthcare.

The WNBA and WNBPA will meet again to negotiate sometime this week, with talks racing toward the second-extension deadline of January 9th, 2026.

After setting a new NCAA basketball record by scoring 100+ points in eight consecutive games, the No. 5 LSU Tigers will face their season's first true test when they visit the preseason-No. 7 Duke Blue Devils as part of the 2025 ACC/SEC Challenge on Thursday night.

"We don't play nobody in our nonconference schedule," senior guard Flau'jae Johnson told JWS in November. "From December on out, that's when it gets really [exciting]."

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With their history-making string of lopsided wins under their belt, the Tigers will try to keep the streak alive against a now-unranked Duke side on a three-game losing skid.

The Blue Devils will rely on leading scorer and rebounder Toby Fournier for a spark, with the sophomore forward averaging 15.8 points per game despite Duke's 3-5 start.

As for LSU, the title-hunting Tigers will look to stat undefeated behind Johnson's team-leading 17.0 scoring average, as well as the 16.1 points per game put up by junior star transfer MiLaysia Fulwiley.

"Ballers just want to ball, like hoopers just want to hoop," Johnson said of LSU's quick cohesion this season. "You find different ways to bond and gel with teammates."

How to watch LSU vs. Duke on Thursday

Duke will host No. 5 LSU in the 2025 ACC/SEC Challenge at 9 PM ET, with live coverage airing on ESPN.

The Washington Spirit's quest to retain their biggest star has hit another snag, as multiple reports on Wednesday revealed that NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman vetoed a proposed multi-million dollar deal to keep USWNT standout Trinity Rodman in the top-flight domestic league.

Per The Athletic, the offer included a four-year scaling contract that would see Rodman's compensation increase in the deal's final two years, with Washington banking on a new NWSL media rights contract in 2028 to help with the 23-year-old free agent's salary bump.

Rodman was reportedly on board to accept the offer, which averaged over $1 million per year, but according to Bloomberg, Berman blocked the deal due to its structure violating "the spirit of the rules."

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Per the current NWSL CBA, there is no maximum salary for any individual player, and the competition manual does not ban year-to-year contractual salary increases so long as they do not exceed the team's salary cap — a figure that is currently on track to grow to $5.1 million by 2030.

As such, the NWSLPA has filed a grievance on Rodman's behalf, asserting that the vetoed contract offer does not violate any standing league rules.

Amid the ongoing negotiations to retain Rodman, the Spirit have also shored up their front office, hiring of former Orlando Pride sporting director Haley Carter as Washington's new president of soccer operations on Wednesday.

One of Carter's first goals is to re-sign Rodman.

"Trinity should be a cornerstone of what we're building in Washington," Carter told The Athletic. "We're committed, from a talent retention standpoint, from a league standpoint, to making that happen. It's just a matter of working with the league to see what the potential solutions are."