116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Heiress to Caitlin Clark as women’s basketball’s headliner is Big Ten newbie JuJu Watkins
Watkins, second to Iowa’s Clark last year in NCAA scoring, is the sophomore sensation who will lead preseason Big Ten-favorite USC in its first year in the conference
Oct. 2, 2024 11:24 am, Updated: Oct. 2, 2024 12:37 pm
The Gazette offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced.
ROSEMONT, Ill. — USC is the new Iowa in Big Ten women’s basketball. Unless it’s UCLA.
The Big Ten annexed four former members of the Pacific-12 Conference prior to the coming season, and the two from Los Angeles have Hollywood-type lighting shining on them.
The league’s coaches and media both picked USC to finish first in the 18-team mega-league, with UCLA second. Then come Ohio State, Maryland and Indiana. The conference only listed the top five.
Last year, of course, Iowa won the Big Ten tournament and proceeded to its second-straight national-championship game appearance with two-time National Player of the Year Caitlin Clark. Clark’s role as women’s college basketball’s headliner now goes to USC sophomore shooting guard JuJu Watkins.
Watkins was second nationally to Clark in scoring last year with her 27.1 points per game. She set a national record for most points in a season by a freshman.
Her team plays at Iowa on Feb. 2. It will be the first time in recent memory when the focal point in a women’s game at Carver-Hawkeye Arena is a visiting player.
“She’s electric,” USC Coach Lindsey Gottlieb said at Wednesday’s Big Ten women’s basketball media day. “I had a men’s basketball coach stop in the gym the other day, and he said he’d grown up watching players from Ann Meyers to Cheryl Miller, to all the great ones.
“He said ‘I think (Watkins) is the most-talented one I’ve seen.’ ”
USC was 29-6 last season. UCLA was 27-7. Both were 13-5 in the Pac-12. Both return enormous talent. They have a combined four of the 10 players named to the Big Ten’s preseason all-league team.
Iowa was the only other team with two, forward Hannah Stuelke and transfer guard Lucy Olsen.
The Hawkeyes are in a strange, new role of not being projected as a Big Ten title contender. They play USC and UCLA just once, which doesn’t hurt.
Iowa Coach Jan Jensen said many people have asked her what the West Coast additions will mean for the Big Ten.
“It means it gets a whole lot tougher to win the championship,” she said, “but it also makes it a whole lot more fun.”
For the second-straight season, general public season-tickets are sold out for the Hawkeye women. With two-thirds of their scoring and three-fourths of their assists gone from last year’s team, it will be an adjustment of sorts for Iowa’s fan base.
It’s a much-larger, more-attentive fan base than it was pre-Clark.
“I think when I got into the league, no one was caring about our recruiting,” Jensen said. “But now you can’t go on Twitter without someone telling me who we’re going to get and not going to get. They know exactly who’s coming to a football game (for a recruiting visit) and who isn’t coming.
“People are interested. They know what’s at stake, if we get a kid, if we don’t get a kid.”
In the meantime, the probable 2024-25 Player of the Year will be an Iowa opponent in February.
“I think Big Ten fan bases and opponents will be excited,” Gottlieb said. “Because (Watkins) brings a level of intensity that makes the game better.”
Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com
Daily Newsletters