Is JuJu Watkins Actually on Pace to Break Caitlin Clark's NCAA Scoring Record?
USC star JuJu Watkins has scored more points through her first 47 college games than Caitlin Clark did at Iowa. She also set the record for most points scored by a freshman last year.
So Watkins must be on pace to break Caitlin Clark's NCAA Division I scoring record, right? The answer is, well, sort of — but not really.
yea juju be ballin’ y’all — records will be broken my friends 🤯 pic.twitter.com/L6mnuvNiB1
— Molly McGrath (@MollyMcGrath12) December 30, 2024
Watkins had 920 points in 34 games as a freshman, compared to Clark's 799 in 30. JuJu currently has amassed 1,248 to Caitlin's 1,230 through the same number of games played in her sophomore year.
However, Clark picked up the pace significantly as a junior and senior. Not to mention she wound up averaging 27 points per game in her second season, while Watkins is currently producing at a clip of 25.2 per contest in hers.
Clark upped her scoring average almost a full point to 27.8 in her third year with the Hawkeyes and then went absolutely ballistic in her final season in putting up 31.6 points per game. This coincided with her squad making deep runs to the championship game in both campaigns, meaning the total games played was also higher and thus the volume of points produced was as well.
Watkins currently sits 2,703 points behind Clark's record mark. Without a set total of games to work with (given we don't know how far the Trojans will advance in the tournaments each year), there's not a specific average she must maintain in order to get there, but we can look at the ballpark numbers.
We'll use Clark's total games played as the benchmark. Given Iowa won three Big Ten tournaments and went to the aforementioned national championship game twice, that is a fairly ambitious number. Clark played a total of 139 games in college. Watkins is currently at 47. Which means the USC standout would have 92 games to go in this scenario.
With an assumed 92 more games to play Watkins would need to average 29.4 points per contest from here on out in order to catch Clark. Of course, the number would come down slightly with a few more games tacked on. But as is, that is more than four points higher than her average this season and over two more than she averaged a season ago.
Which means "on pace" is a relative term. Because as awesome as Watkins has been thus far in her college career, she'll have to up her scoring stats significantly to actually break Clark's NCAA scoring record.
Robin Lundberg is a media veteran and hoops head who has spent the bulk of his career with iconic brands like Sports Illustrated and ESPN. His insights have also been featured on platforms such as Fox and CNN and he can currently be heard hosting shows for Sirius XM and on his burgeoning YouTube show. And now he brings his basketball expertise to Women's Fastbreak on SI!