USC Women's Basketball: JuJu Watkins Addresses Ankle Injury Ahead Of Pac-12 Tournament Final
Within the first minute of your 25-5 USC Trojans' Pac-12 Tournament Semifinal game against the UCLA Bruins, All-Pac-12 freshman shooting guard JuJu Watkins fell to the floor with a left ankle injury and had to depart the proceedings.
She was diagnosed with a sprained ankle, but would return just two minutes later... only to eventually re-injure the same ankle midway through the contest's first bonus frame. She would limp back onto the hardwood and continue to grit it out, drawing plenty of contact even after the second flare-up.
All told Watkins would go on to push the Cardinal and Gold on offense, producing a little less than half of the team's points (33, on 9-of-27 shooting from the floor and 14-of-17 shooting from the charity stripe) in an inefficient, hard-nosed 80-70 double overtime victory.
According to Luca Evans of The Orange County Register, Watkins reflected after the game about the ailment.
"Even when I went out, I knew I'd get back in, because my team needed me," Watkins said initially. She subsequently noted, "it's just an ankle. Nothing I'm not used to. Feel great."
USC won't have much of a break before its next matchup: the Pac-12 Tournament championship game against the event's top-seeded Stanford Cardinal, slated for Sunday at 2:30 p.m.
