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USC star JuJu Watkins, the favorite to win the 2025 Wooden Award, tore her ACL in the first quarter of the Trojans’ second-round game against Mississippi State on Monday night. The team announced that she would undergo surgery and ruled her out for the remainder of the tournament.
Given that ACL injuries require up to 12 months to recover, Watkins will likely miss most, if not all, of next season as well. Her absence will be a blow to the momentum of women’s basketball, especially because she was poised to take over as the face of the sport with Paige Bueckers expected to leave UConn this year.
Fortunately for USC and the NCAA, Watkins should return to college basketball by the 2026–2027 season. Watkins, who turns 20 in July, can’t enter the WNBA draft until 2027 since domestic prospects are required to be 22 years old in the year of the draft.
This is a stark contrast from the men’s side, where top college prospects who sustained season-ending injuries during their college days—like Zion Williamson and Blake Griffin—still left for the pros immediately. NBA draft eligibility rules allow for players to enter the draft a year after high school and the much larger monetary benefits of locking into an NBA contract make the move financially logical for men’s basketball prospects.
There are a couple of scenarios that could mean Watkins already played her final college game, albeit unlikely. WNBA draft eligibility rules could change before 2027, especially given the league’s expected expansion from 12 to 16 teams by 2028 and the uncertainty surrounding the league’s collective bargaining agreement with its players’ association. Watkins could also take the unconventional route and go pro before 2027 by playing in Unrivaled—a league in which she is an investor.
On the flip side, Watkins could also stay in college longer. If she is out all of next year, she’ll be given an additional year of NCAA eligibility, which she could use for the 2027–2028 season. This tactic could gauge the landscape of the pro scene to see whether waiting an extra year would make a difference in her contract or her WNBA landing spot—assuming she’s a surefire No. 1 pick in any draft class.
Trojans Still Fighting
USC still has a shot in the tournament despite the loss of perhaps the best player in the country. The burden now falls on forward Kiki Iriafen, the Stanford transfer who took a back seat to Watkins this year. She answered the call Monday following Watkins’s injury by dropping 36 points in the team’s blowout win.
Iriafen was once penciled in as the No. 2 pick in the 2025 draft behind Bueckers but has seen her stock drop slightly throughout the season. She could see her stock rise once again if she’s able to lead USC deeper into the tournament, starting with a face-off against Ayoka Lee and Kansas State on Saturday.
