Women’s Basketball | April 01, 2024
USC freshman guard JuJu Watkins continues to be considered one of the nation’s best in the game, named as one of four finalists for the Honda Award for women’s basketball just as Watkins and the Trojans enter the NCAA Elite Eight against UConn today (April 1) in Portland, Ore.
The Honda Sport Award has been presented annually by the CWSA for the past 48 years to the top women athletes in 12 NCAA-sanctioned sports and signifies “the best of the best in collegiate athletics”. The winner of the sport award becomes a finalist for the Collegiate Woman Athlete of the Year and the prestigious 2024 Honda Cup, which will be presented during a live telecast on CBS Sports Network on Monday, June 24, 2024, at 7 PM ET, from its new home in New York City.
Watkins has helped the top-seeded Trojans reach the NCAA Elite Eight for the first time since 1994, following in the footsteps of two other Women of Troy who carved a similar path at USC and who both were Honda Award winners for basketball — Cheryl Miller and Lisa Leslie. Miller also won the overall Honda-Broderick Cup in 1984.
Watkins now holds USC’s single-season scoring record, and she currently holds 891 points in her freshman campaign to stand seven points away from the NCAA record for single-season scoring by a freshman. She already holds another USC record (male or female) with 14 games with 30 or more points scored — a mark that beats out Iowa’s Caitlin Clark previous national record of 12 for the most such games for a freshman over the last 25 seasons. The No. 2 scorer in the nation with her 27.0 points per game, Watkins set yet another USC record with a 51-point outing in a USC road upset of Stanford, and that mark still stands as the most points scored by any player in the nation this season. Additionally, Watkins’ 42 points vs. Colorado on Feb. 23 is the most points ever scored by a USC basketball player (male or female) at Galen Center. Watkins currently ranks No. 3 all-time in single-season scoring by a true freshman in the nation, and her 891 points also ranks her No. 54all-time in Pac-12 history.
But Watkins provides more than just scoring for these No. 3-ranked Trojans. Entering the NCAA Tournament, she stood as the only player in the country averaging multiple steals per game as well…
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