USC’s JuJu Watkins and Kiki Iriafen discover their bond runs deep – San Bernardino County Sun

LOS ANGELES — Kiki Iriafen’s grandparents know, of course, that their granddaughter plays basketball. But they still have no idea as mother Yemi Iriafen laughed who it could be.

The name Iriafen has for generations revolved around the values ​​of education and Catholicism. You get good grades. You pray. Iriafen’s grandfather, Segun Ogunsaju, is a professor and her grandmother, Fadeke, worked at a university in their home in Nigeria, and values ​​are not compromised. For years, Iriafen was just a Stanford student in their eyes, and after her early graduation this past year — after tackling a 22-unit workload — Fadeke asked her granddaughter what was next.

do you go to work

“Basketball is my job,” tried to explain Iriafen, a scholar who was recently named the nation’s best striker.

Fadeke and Segun still live in Nigeria and haven’t seen her play since high school, when Iriafen became a prized recruit at Harvard-Westlake. Iriaphen plays for them after all. She plays for her mother, Yemi, and father, Harrison, who raised her growing up in the San Fernando Valley to value family above all else. She plays for her sister Oyinkan, who now also plays at Harvard-Westlake.

“I play,” Iriaphen sometimes says to her mother, “for the people who poured into me.”

Her landscape-changing decision to transfer to USC this spring was many: the opportunity to win a national title, the school’s investment in women’s basketball, to play for Lindsay Gottlieb. But it was primarily about coming home.

Iriafen’s life will truly begin soon and will take her somewhere even further after her name is likely to be called in the first two picks of the WNBA draft in April. She wanted to spend a year watching her sister’s games and seeing her parents at hers. Fadeke and Segun are currently staying with family in Southern California, planning to attend USC’s opener on Nov. 9 to see Iriafen play collegiate ball for the first time.

“She wants to win, but nothing is guaranteed,” Yemi said. “But one thing no one can take away from her is having her family at her games.”

After a breakout junior year of 19.4 points and 11 rebounds per game at Stanford, import Iriafen instantly elevated USC from a future national player to a bona fide national championship contender. Her on-court partnership with sophomore JuJu Watkins will determine whether these Trojans can capitalize on those expectations, an athletic finisher suddenly paired with a formidable point guard. Soon, Iriafen’s name will be blaring over the Galen Center speakers along with her newest pick-and-roll partner, nicknames uttered with such excitement that they blend from two syllables into one.

Kiki. Ju Ju.

They only have an advantage in chemistry. The two share a bond in shared values ​​that goes deeper than the simple homophony of their first names. Both came to USC for the same reasons. They both play for the family. Both play for Los Angeles.

“They are both punished,” Yemi said. “They’ve both been punished, which is a good thing.”

Meaningful choices

Ever since Iriafen grew up adhering to strong Nigerian values, her family maintained a mantra: You are “the child of what you are.”

“It means that when you’re in public,” Yemi said, “you also respect us.”

Watkins is also a child of who she is. Her great-grandfather, Ted Watkins, founded the Watts Labor Community Committee, a civil rights leader in Watkins’ hometown of Watts. Meeting in high school, she finds solace in her grandparents, cousins ​​and aunts, visiting the family home in Watts after nights off and losses. On the day of her commitment to USC, a contingent of family and family friends filled the stands at Sierra Canyon High and watched Watkins wail about the importance of a collegiate ball game a few miles from home.

“I realize basketball will take me anywhere in the world,” Watkins told this reporter before his senior year at Sierra Canyon. “But it’s important to me and my family that I never forget where I come from.”

During his three years at Stanford, Iriafen never forgot where he came from. Her basketball journey began in a Porter Ranch youth league at Shepherd of the Hills Church, where Harvard-Westlake coach Melissa Herlihy first saw her running up and down the floor in eighth grade and was instantly sold. This winter, after Iriafen and Stanford were surprisingly ousted in the Sweet 16 by North Carolina State, she returned home to sit in the stands for the Harvard-Westlake playoff game and watch her sister, Oyinkan.

After the bell, Iriafen caught up with Herlihy, her former coach.

“It meant so much to me,” she told Herlihy, “to have a chance to see my sister play.”

Iriafen entered the transfer portal in April. She was leaning toward USC or UCLA. Then Dawn Staley and national champion South Carolina came calling.

Yemi told her daughter that the decision was hers. She also told her she wanted her home.

Around the same time, Watkins also reached out. The two had long been friendly, competing against each other in high school when Watkins was a freshman at Windward High, Iriafen sent Watkins proud-of-you DM after the USC freshman scored 51 points at Stanford in March.

“Super friendly, super fair, down to earth, that’s really all I can say,” Iriafen said of their conversation in April. “And it was like, ‘We want you here and I want to play with you.’ And I was like, “I’d like to play with you too.”

Around the same time, Harrison Iriafen reached out to Watkins’ parents, asking for feedback on USC’s program and coaching staff. It meant “a lot” to Iriafen and her family, head coach Gottlieb reasoned, that everyone welcomed the partnership. And quickly, the two families – and the two children of who are they – I realized they clicked a lot.

“Because I hold family so close to my heart,” Watkins reflected Tuesday, “I was able to see that early on when she came to visit, her family was there.”

“I see that she has very strong values,” Watkins continued a few words later. “And I think that’s important, just, in life.”

The will to compete

Shortly after the Lakers’ season ended in April, Watkins spent the summer working consistently with longtime coach and former Lakers assistant Phil Handy, perfecting his left arm — and the area of ​​his game that Handy has always considered key to its full potential.

“I really don’t think JuJu cares about scoring as much as people think,” Handy told the Southern California News Group this summer. “It’s natural for her to be aggressive.

“But in her aggression now that she’s starting to read the game and understand it more, you’re just going to see her become a more well-rounded player in all aspects.”

Iriafen arrived at the perfect time in Watkins’ post-freshman development, taking 22.4 shots per game (second in the nation, trailing only Caitlin Clark). In his first NCAA Tournament appearance, Watkins provided plenty of flashy moments, but shot 37% from the floor, often forcing the attention of a team that lacks a wide array of consistent shot creators.

“Just what she was given last year was her time to shine,” Iriafen said a few weeks ago. “So she’s a very willing bystander and always looks out for all of us.”

This development will now be key to running a two-man game with Iriafen. A pick-and-roll between the two presents a devastating challenge for opposing defenses, as Iriafen described a few weeks ago. Commit to Iriafen on the throw and Watkins can get to his favorite elbow curl. Commit to Watkins on the ball and Iriaphene will free herself.

“She’s just, she’s just a dogWatkins said Tuesday. “When you’re able to share the floor with people who want to win and are very competitive, it’s just — it’s just a weight lifted off the shoulder.”