Women’s basketball has been receiving great press and record viewing and attendance numbers recently, and now another popular player has reportedly agreed to one of the “richest shoe endorsement deals in women’s basketball.”
According to a news report from ESPN‘s Shams Charania, JuJu Watkins, who recently played her first year of collegiate basketball with the University of Southern California (USC), has extended a deal she had with sporting goods giant Nike. The multiyear extension makes her contract with Nike the richest for a woman basketball player.
Watkins, who hails from the Golden State, has been signed to Nike since she was a senior in high school in October 2022. The 19-year-old sophomore helped the Trojans reach the Elite Eight in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1994.
In her first year at USC, she set a new NCAA
Division 1 Women’s Basketball record, scoring 920 points. She became the all-time leading scorer among first-year students in NCAA Division I women’s basketball history.ABC News reported that Watkins surpassed the scoring record of T
ina Hutchinson of San Diego State, who scored 898 points when she set the record in 1983-84. With her 920 points, Watkins became the first freshman in Division I history to score more than 900 points in a single season.Only one player, current Indiana Fever rookie Caitlin Clark, had a higher scoring average than Watkins, who averaged 27.1 points per game.
Watkins’ first year led to her being selected as a Wooden Award All-American and one of five John R. Wooden Award finalists, according to USCTrojans.com. She is the first women’s player from USC to be selected as a Wooden All-American or to be named a Wooden Award finalist since the organization began its women’s award program in 2004.
She was also named to the Pac-12 All-Tournament Team as she led the Trojans to win the 2024 Pac-12 Tournament Championship. The United States Basketball Writers Association and The Athletic also picked her as the National Freshman of the Year.
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