Charles Barkley Claims JuJu Watkins 'Probably Is a Better Player' Than Caitlin Clark
It's hard to imagine that any women's college basketball player — or any college basketball player, for that matter — will produce a better college career than Caitlin Clark.
After all, the 22-year-old set the NCAA record for most points ever scored, with 3,685. That's going to be tough to beat anytime soon.
However, there's already one player in the women's game that's currently on pace to do so: USC Trojans superstar JuJu Watkins.
Watkins finished her freshman season with USC with a total of 920 points (27.1 points per game). Clark tallied 799 points (26.6 points per game) in her freshman season at Iowa
Regardless of whether Watkins can catch Clark's iconic scoring record throughout her four Iowa seasons, the 19-year-old is a certified superstar with a staggering offensive skillset.
In fact, NBA legend and analyst Charles Barkley made a surprising claim when comparing Clark and Watkins during an October 10 episode of the "Throwbacks" podcast.
"Caitlin is a supernova. And JuJu is probably a better player," Barkley said when USC football legend Matt Leinart asserted that he thinks Watkins will be even better than Clark.
"Those two women going to be running the WNBA for the next 10, 12, 14, 15, 20 years, basically," Barkley continued.
While Barkley's sentiment is probably going to incite some controversy, the bottom line is that women's basketball is in a very good place with players like Watkins, Clark, Paige Bueckers, and Angel Reese.
Plus, with Trojans coach Lindsay Gottlieb having reached out to Clark for how she can help Watkins manage superstardom, there's clearly a great deal of respect between the two icons.
Grant Young covers Women’s Basketball, the New York Yankees, and the New York Mets for Sports Illustrated’s ‘On SI’ sites. He holds an MFA degree in creative writing from the University of San Francisco (USF), where he also graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and played on USF’s Division I baseball team for five years. However, he now prefers Angel Reese to Angels in the Outfield.