Luca Evans (OC Register)  —  LOS ANGELES — Three seconds before the buzzer sounded, she lifted her hands to the crowd that had come for her, that had poured into the Galen Center in the pouring Southern California rain for her.

JuJu Watkins’ work, as Talia Von Oelhoffen dribbled out the final ticks from a game that will live long in USC lore, was done. The slump, which had sapped the joy from one of the most naturally joyful players in college basketball, was busted.

Any semblance of a shooting slump had seemingly washed away in the rainy L.A. night. And Watkins turned toward the courtside seats, smiling slightly, beckoning with her fingers.

In that front row was actor/comedian Kevin Hart, sitting with Watkins’ family. Her sister Mali Nicole was there, too, a talented singer who had belted out the national anthem a few hours earlier. Mother Sari and father Bobby were there, standing. It was a microcosm, in a split-second moment, of her story: the celebrity presence she had enraptured, and the Los Angeles roots that grounded her.

And as the adulation poured out after a 38-point Watkins performance in one of the crowning moments of her career, leading USC (22-2 overall, 12-1 Big Ten) to a 71-60 upset of top-ranked UCLA (23-1, 11-1) in a game that will live long in Los Angeles lore. It was USC’s first victory over a top-ranked team since defeating Louisiana Tech in the 1983 national championship game. That it came against rival UCLA only made it sweeter.

“I can’t properly put it into perspective,” USC head coach Lindsay Gottlieb said, stammering slightly, on the team’s postgame radio show.

“As good as anything I’ve ever seen,” she proclaimed, a few sentences later.

It was impossible, truly, to encapsulate what happened here. The sheer flow-state that Watkins found, from opening tip-off to final buzzer. She dropped 25 first-half points, and smothered UCLA and star center Lauren Betts with five fourth-quarter blocked shots, finishing with eight for the night.

USC’s Kiki Iriafen grabs a loose ball in front of UCLA’s Gabriela Jaquez in the first quarter Thursday. (Wally Skalij / LAT)

Fellow star Kiki Iriafen, who had struggled for much of the night, stepped up big in the fourth quarter with nine points and an effective game-sealing three-point play – a layup off a feed from Watkins – to put USC ahead 67-57 with 2:25 left. Backup center Clarice Akunwafo finished with zero points in 21 minutes, but she battled Betts effectively all night, UCLA’s All-American candidate putting up 18 points and 13 rebounds, but on just 5-of-13 shooting.

They played, indeed, this Thursday night, on Feb. 13. But this matchup, with Issa Rae and Hart and new Los Angeles Spark Kelsey Plum peering from courtside seats, wasn’t nearly about Feb. 13 as it was a peek ahead to March. At the end of UCLA’s practice on Wednesday, Betts told her undefeated program she was excited for us to show this next step, a local heavyweight matchup turning into one of the most celebrated regular-season matchups in recent local college basketball memory.

“I’m sorta calling it,” UCLA coach Cori Close said Wednesday, “a Final Four dress rehearsal.”

And when the show started Thursday, Watkins took center stage. For the better part of a month, she had been trapped in a haze of self-criticism, the sheer bun-sporting joy that had inspired so many girls to follow her path draining away under a slew of missed jumpers. Her shoulders slouched, her face turning blank, throughout a dour 5-of-21 shooting night in a victory over Ohio State, a video of Lindsay Gottlieb trying to speak to a stone-faced Watkins going viral over the weekend.

As soon as she took hardwood Thursday, though, pressure had melted away under languid movements, chucking up a half-court shot in her warmups for the heck of it. And Watkins came out firing, carrying USC early against UCLA. First came three 3-pointers in the first seven minutes, one a Harlem-Globetrotter-style play where she fell, somehow gathered her dribble in one motion, and fired off a 3-pointer that dropped home. Then came a nasty turnaround jumper in the second quarter, a 180-degree rotation from the elbow, the flow-state returned.

UCLA refused to let Watkins alone pen the story of Thursday night’s bout, though. After a two-headed center duo of Rayah Marshall and Akunwafo had success early in containing Betts, she got going late in the second quarter, dropping in a layup and finding Kendall Dudley on a pretty cut. A couple midrange buckets by Londynn Jones, and the Bruins had punched right back with a 10-0 run to cut USC’s lead to 38-35 by halftime.  Still, Betts took just four shots in the first half.

As blue-and-gold transcendent center went toe-to-toe with cardinal-and-gold transcendent guard in the second half, though, UCLA adjusted better to Watkins than USC did to Betts. As Watkins single-handedly carried USC’s offense on her back – the rest of the Trojans’ roster going all of 4-of-19 in the first half – the Bruins sent a bevy of second-level help at her, holding USC without a field goal for the first few minutes of the third quarter. Betts, meanwhile, began to feast, scoring the first five points of the second half and finishing a roaring and-one layup.

Jones nailed a 3-pointer to give the Bruins a 45-38 lead with seven minutes left, and USC’s hopes seemed finished, simply too reliant on Watkins for a lift.

But she had found her joy, again, and smothered UCLA in the second half of a raucous win.

USC’s defense was no slouch, either, down the stretch, with UCLA hitting just two of its last 19 shots.

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