USC senior guard JuJu Watkins is back on the preseason award circuit, landing on the 20-player watch list for the 2027 Ann Meyers Drysdale Shooting Guard of the Year Award, as announced Tuesday, Oct. 27 by the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame and the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association.
The honor puts Watkins in position to chase something no one in the award’s short history has ever done: win it three times. She already owns the distinction of being the first two-time winner, taking home the trophy in 2024 and 2025 after being recognized as the nation’s top shooting guard in each of her first two college seasons.
The award, now in its 10th year, goes to the top shooting guard in NCAA Division I women’s basketball and is named for Hall of Famer Ann Meyers Drysdale, who became the first player, regardless of gender, to receive All-America honors in four straight college seasons.
Watkins’ return makes the watch list even more notable. The Los Angeles native missed the 2025-26 season while recovering from an injury suffered during the 2025 NCAA Tournament, but she wasted no time reminding everyone what she brings when she’s on the floor. In USC’s exhibition win over Cal on Oct. 25, she played for the first time in 580 days and finished with 18 points, three rebounds, three steals and two blocks in 23 minutes as the Women of Troy edged out a 78-76 victory.
Her most recent full season was a full sweep of the sport’s biggest individual prizes. Watkins captured the Naismith Trophy, John R.
Wooden Award, USBWA Ann Meyers Drysdale National Player of the Year award and AP National Player of the Year award. She averaged 24.6 points per game in the 2024-25 campaign and was a unanimous AP All-America First Team selection, becoming one of only three players in history - along with Courtney Paris and Maya Moore - to earn first-team honors as both a freshman and a sophomore.
She also picked up Big Ten Player of the Year and Big Ten Female Athlete of the Year honors.
The accolades have carried right into the new season. Watkins enters 2026-27 as the Big Ten Preseason Player of the Year and a Preseason AP All-American.
The watch list will be trimmed as the season moves along. Fan voting opens Friday, Oct. 30, and runs during each of the award’s three rounds.
From there, the field will go from 20 players to 10 in February, then to five finalists in March. Those finalists will eventually be placed before Meyers Drysdale and the Hall of Fame selection committee, which includes women’s college basketball personnel, media members, head coaches, sports information directors and Hall of Famers.
The winner will be announced with the other four members of the Women’s Starting Five on a date to be determined.
USC opens the 2026-27 season on Monday, Nov. 2, when the Trojans face UNLV at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Tipoff is set for 1 p.m. PT on CBS Sports Network.
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Lincoln Riley Just Raised The Stakes On USCs Brutal Stretch
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Jen Cohens arrival as athletic director has also given Riley another important layer of support as USC tries to steady itself through a punishing stretch on the schedule. The next run of games will tell a lot about how far the Trojans have come, because it is coming against ranked Big Ten opponents and will test both the roster and the coachs belief that the progress behind the scenes is starting to show up where it matters most. [Read more 🡒]