LOS ANGELES (AP) \u2014 JuJu Watkins had 32 points, 16 rebounds, six assists and five steals to lead No. 3 USC to a 118-40 win over Utah State on Sunday.<\/p>\n
It was a star-studded return for one of college basketball\u2019s most electric players.<\/p>\n
Sunday was USC\u2019s home opener at the Galen Center and fans showered Watkins with applause in pregame lineup introductions. Watkins had missed 20 months with a torn ACL, and she got a standing ovation as she was subbed out with 2:34 left in the game.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s back to looking like she was pre-injury, when she was the AP Player of the Year.<\/p>\n
The senior has been a scoring machine in two games, totaling 53 points for USC (2-0). Watkins scored 21 points in USC\u2019s season-opening 100-68 win over UNLV in Nevada.<\/p>\n
Watkins got the crowd going in pregame introductions and then with a buzzer-beating pull-up jumper from 15 feet to end the first quarter with USC leading 36-11.<\/p>\n
Watkins was in All-American form as she made plays all over the floor. She used a crossover to get Sami Mancini off-balance in the first quarter, then made a jump shot. She was running the fastbreak, rebounding, making shots from the elbow and inside and outside. It was a clinic.<\/p>\n
Saniyah Hall added 20 points for the Trojans as six players scored in double figures.<\/p>\n
Kylani Rookstool scored 12 points for Utah State (1-2) and Mancini added 10.<\/p>\n
Watkins nearly had a double-double by halftime with 16 points and nine rebounds as the Trojans led 55-22.<\/p>\n
UP NEXT: Utah State: hosts Idaho State on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
USC: hosts College of Charleston on Tuesday. ___<\/p>\n
Sign up for Top 25 poll alerts here<\/a>, visit the Top 25 here<\/a> and see AP\u2019s full college basketball coverage here<\/a><\/p>\n \n Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup.\n <\/p>\n \n Error! There was an error processing your request.\n <\/p>\n Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES (AP) \u2014 JuJu Watkins had 32 points, 16 rebounds, six assists and five steals to lead…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":910916,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[20509,402,4044,398,400,401,99,380683,1764],"class_list":["post-910915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-basketball","tag-athlete-injuries","tag-basketball","tag-college-basketball","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-basketball","tag-ncaabasketball","tag-sports","tag-usc-juju-utah-state-score","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=910915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/910916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=910915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=910915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=910915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}