JuJu Watkins reached and then passed the 1,000-point mark as a college basketball player on Friday afternoon. USC women’s basketball blasted Santa Clara, 81-50, to move to 4-0 on the young season. Watkins reached the milestone in her 38th game as a Trojan, which is quite remarkable when you do the math.
If you get out a calculator, 38 multipled by 20 equals 760. Right there, that tells you Watkins is averaging well above 20 points per game in every USC game she has played, going back to the start of her freshman season. Watkins is averaging 26.3 points per game — not this season, but in her entire USC career … and she’s just four games into her sophomore season! She is going to get even better. She is going to learn even more about how to break down opposing defenses. The 26.3-points-per-game average is not the ceiling. This begins to give basketball fans a clearer, sharper idea of how genuinely excellent JuJu Watkins has been in her USC career, which is closer to its beginning than its eventual end.
The really good news for USC beyond Watkins’ milestone on Friday against Santa Clara is that the defense is very consistent. USC is allowing an average of under 48 points per game this season. It has allowed more than 50 points in only one of its four games thus far. Assistant coach Beth Burns has her players focused at that end of the floor, while Lindsay Gottlieb’s offense is more of a work in progress.
The lingering concern for USC is 3-point shooting. The Trojans hit only 6 of 28 triples (21.4 percent) for the second time this season. USC has hit under 22 percent of its 3-pointers in three of its four games. That needs to improve. It is the one relatively consistent flaw for this team, which is checking all the other boxes.
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