USC football offered one of the biggest offensive linemen in the country in four-star 2025 Ceder Rapids (IA) offensive tackle Nick Brooks on Friday. Brooks is the No. 1 prospect in Iowa, boasting offers from Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Iowa, LSU, Miami, Michigan, Penn State and Texas among others.
Brooks is arguably the biggest offensive tackle in the 2025 class, standing 6-foot-7 and 345 pounds. He is rated the No. 166 overall prospect and the No. 16 offensive tackle, according to the 247Sports Composite. Brooks is the No. 131 overall prospect and the No. 15 offensive tackle. Iowa is the leader in the Crystal Ball projections.
USC holds just one commitment in the 2025 cycle: five-star Georgia QB Julian Lewis, who recently reclassified from the 2026 cycle. USC signed five offensive linemen in the 2023 cycle and five offensive linemen in the 2024 cycle.
On the one hand, Lindsay Gottlieb and her USC women’s basketball team could argue JuJu Watkins’ record-setting destruction of No. 4 Stanford at Maples Pavilion Friday night was exactly what the program and its fans envisioned when Watkins signed with the Trojans.
On the other hand, WOW!
Watkins put recent individual struggles and her team’s not-unrelated struggles in the rearview mirror with a spectacular 51-point performance that broke the USC women’s scoring record for a single game.
Process that fact alone.
The program of Cheryl Miller, Tina Thompson and Lisa Leslie now has a new single-game scoring champ. However, it doesn’t stop there. It was also the most points by a Division I player this year.
JuJu was a one-woman gang tonight. She carried a USC team that had just lost three of four. Watkins herself hit Maples shooting just 36 percent from the field and 21 percent from three over her last eight games. Tonight she shot 54 percent from the field overall (14 of 26), hit 6 of 11 three-pointers (55 percent) and 17 of 19 free throws.
But it wasn’t just that.
Watkins showed up and carried her entire team against the No. 4 team in the country on the road. Stanford has essentially been the gold standard for basketball on the West Coast since Tara VanDerveer arrived on campus 38 seasons ago. VanDerveer recently became the winningest coach in Division I college basketball history, women’s and men’s. Former Washington star Kelsey Plum put 44 on Stanford in Seattle a few years back, but dating back to this century, nobody had ever done to the Cardinal what Watkins did tonight.
This was a systematic dismantling that almost makes an embarrassment of the word ‘special.’ Stanford sent victim after victim out to guard Watkins. These were players that were all elite recruits in their own right. They were as hapless as those first graders going up against Billy Madison, only this wasn’t a movie. This was one of the biggest stages in the women’s game against a surefire top-three WNBA draft pick in Cameron Brink and Stanford players not used to being completely deleted on the court.
Catch. Shoot. Splash. Catch. Jab step. Rise. Cash. Catch. Drive. Hesi. Step back. Splash.
The efficient precision was as economic as the word count in the line above. Watkins didn’t even break a sweat out there. She played her game. She went where she wanted. She caught it where she wanted and once the ball was in her hands, the lights were out for Stanford.
You could actually see Stanford fans in the stands smiling in delirious respect for what they witnessed. Trust me, Stanford people don’t enjoy smiling at anything USC does unless it’s lose. On this night, Watkins’ brilliance was so disarming the Cardinal crowd had no choice.
“You saw a great, great player out there,” VanDerveer said after the game. “JuJu Watkins had a great game. I can’t remember…John (Stanford SID John Cantalupi) will have to help me…Nykesha Sales might have had 50 on us one time. She (Watkins) had a great game.”
VanDerveer has seen it all, said it all, and done it all. Her opening remarks were filled with multiple audible pauses in the wake of what Watkins had just done to her team.
That’s what was so impressive in watching Watkins’ performance. VanDerveer pivoted to Stanford’s offensive struggles. Watkins’ offensive brilliance spun Stanford so dramatically that the normally precise Cardinal looked tentative and honestly dazed on the other end of the court all game long.
It almost doesn’t matter exactly where Watkins takes USC over the remainder of this season and the next two after that (don’t get me started on that issue). This was the night everybody will look back on with a twinkle in their eyes and agree was a touchstone moment. This was the kind of game where 20,000 people will claim they were at a game in a gym that seats less than 7,400. The kind of game where everyone remembers where they actually were when they saw it.
JuJu Watkins arrived at USC as the No. 1 recruit in the country. In one night, she already clinched her eleventh Pac-12 Freshman of the Week award. Unless she spends USC’s next game at Cal trapped on Alcatraz, she’s going to be the Player of the Week as well. The best prospect in the country didn’t just meet expectations. Against the No. 4 team in the country, she exceeded them.
USC now moves forward knowing without a doubt that when its best player plays her best, it not only doesn’t matter what the rest of her team does. It doesn’t even matter what the other team does.
Shame on us who waited until tonight to make her a can’t miss viewing opportunity. She didn’t just steal the show. She was the show.
One of those nights…that we’ll never forget.
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