In the world of women’s basketball, everyone is talking about JuJu Watkins and her injury. She is a sophomore at the University of Southern California and is the point guard for the women’s basketball team. She had to cut her season short due to an ACL tear but looking at her accomplishments throughout the beginning of the season, this injury didn’t have a huge effect on how well she did.
Before she got injured, she was very popular because of her performance on the court. While only being a sophomore, she won many awards and gained a lot of publicity. One of the awards she won is the Female Athlete of the Year at the Tommy Awards at USC, this is an award honoring some of the top athletes at USC.
Another award she won is the 2025 Dawn Staley Award, honoring the best point guard in NCAA Women’s Basketball. Along with the John R. Wooden Award, the AP Player of the Year, the BIG Ten Player of the Year, and the Naismith College player of the year awards.
JuJu Watkins won all of these awards from just the beginning of the season. Kara Ogbeide ‘28, a freshman at Wilmington Friends School, is an avid women’s basketball watcher. Ogbeide ‘28 says, “she had a very good season for being a sophomore and it was disappointing that it ended with an ACL injury.”
It is obvious with all the awards she has won JuJu Watkins is one of the best players when it comes to current women’s college basketball. JuJu Watkins got injured on March 24, 2025, so she got to play in the first round of March Madness. This means she had a lot of time to play with her teammates before her injury. Her teammates had to adapt to playing differently when their starting point guard was injured.
When asked how Watkins’ team was affected when she got injured, Kaylee Ogbeide ‘28 stated “It has made her team a lot better, she is their main scorer so it affected them a lot. Without her scoring other people had to step up.” Without Watkins her team needed to fill the role of their leading scorer to help them do well in the bracket.
Conner Brennan ‘28, another freshman at Wilmington Friends, says, “She had a good season until she got injured. She had a lot of potential at the beginning of the season.” In the beginning of her season her statistics went up majorly from the previous year. All of her stats were shown in an article called “USC Shares Major JuJu Watkins News” by Lorenzo J. Reyna on Athlon Sports.
She improved her field goal percentage by 42.6%, along with three-point percentage. That went up to 32.5%. With those statistics he was averaging 23.9 points per game, which is way above other women’s college basketball players, who average about 13-19 points per game. Before her injury she scored 20 or more points in 7 consecutive games. That shows great improvement, who knows what would have happened if she hadn’t gotten injured and was still improving.
Kara Ogbeide ‘28 comments on her return to basketball, “For coming back she will make a good transition back to the USA team and I’m interested to see how she will step up and come back.”
Overall, JuJu Watkins had a really good season with a sad ending, but next year she will be a junior and hopefully get back on the court and dominate.
