USC star Juju watkins On Saturday he was named Wooden Award 2025, taking home the honor of the most important player in women’s basketball.
Watkins won the prize for other finalists Paige Bueckers from Uconne, Lauren Betts from Teased, Hannah Hidalgo from Virgin Mary and Madison Booker from Texas.
Watkins also won the Associated Press Player of the Year and NaismMith Women’s College Player of the Year.
Watkins, Sophomore, becomes only the third subclass who won the honor that was first distributed in the College Basketball in the 2003-04 season. Maya Moore won during her Sophomore season in the UConn season in 2009 and Bueckers won it in 2022, became the first freshman to do so.
Before the Watkins season ending ACL tears in the second round of the NCAA tournament, this season dominated female basketball and ended the fourth in the nation scoring with 23.9 points per game, along with 6.8 rebounds, 3.4 assistance, 2.2 stolen and 1.8 blocks in 33.8 minutes.
Guardian 6-Naha-2 has already placed ninth in the USC list in career scoring.
It led the Trojan horses to their best season in more than four decades. They went 31-4, of which 17-1 in Big Ten, and in 31 years they buried the first championship of the season in regular season. After watkins injury, USC won two games to advance to Eight Eight for the second year in a row before it fell on Uconn.
USC coach Lindsay Gottlieb told ESPN that he doesn’t know Watkins’s time -recovery time – if the next season is a red shirt or tries to return. In any case, the program expects “her return will be legendary,” Gottlieb said.
