USC superstar JuJu Watkins wins ESPY Award for best breakthrough athlete

JuJu adds an ESPY Award to her growing collection of honors.

USC won at the 2024 ESPY Awards on Thursday evening. USC women’s basketball superstar JuJu Watkins won the ESPY for best breakthrough athlete.

What more can be said about JuJu Watkins’ freshman season with USC women’s basketball? The numbers were impressive, but the impact tells the true and complete story about JuJu’s brilliance. USC was a No. 8 seed in the 2023 Women’s NCAA Tournament, a solid team but nowhere near a national championship or Final Four contender. JuJu came in as a freshman and instantly elevated the Trojans by several orders of magnitude. USC finished second in the cutthroat Pac-12, won the Pac-12 Conference Tournament, earned a No. 1 seed in the Women’s NCAA Tournament, and reached the Elite Eight for the first time since 1994. That’s an extraordinary level of impact, made even bigger when one realizes that JuJu was playing with a collection of transfers brought in by Lindsay Gottlieb as one-year roster additions. JuJu is now being accompanied by the No. 1-ranked recruiting class in the country for the 2024-2025 season. USC is a frontline Final Four contender, and the expectations for the program are now “Final Four at minimum.” USC expects to be a national title contender on an annual basis with JuJu and Gottlieb leading the way.

We congratulate JuJu Watkins on her richly-deserved ESPY Award.

Visit our friends at Fighting Irish Wire, Buffaloes Wire, and Ducks Wire. Follow our newest sites, UW Huskies Wire and UCLA Wire.

Check out more NFL draft coverage with the USA TODAY Sports NFL Draft Hub.