South Carolina women's basketball star Ashlyn Watkins out for year with torn ACL

01/07/2025 06:48 PM

South Carolina women’s basketball junior Ashlyn Watkins has a torn ACL and will miss the remainder of the 2024-25 season, the team announced on Tuesday. Watkins will have surgery in the next few weeks.

"Not often that we've had injuries like this one. Unfortunately Ashlyn's out for the rest of the season,” head coach Dawn Staley said Tuesday on her Carolina Calls call-in show. “I know her sisters will rally around her injury and know that she'll be sorely missed. But I know Ashlyn would want us to go on and compete and try to win another national championship."

Watkins played 14 games this season and averaged 7.2 points, 6.4 rebounds and 1.9 blocks per game. Her injury occurred in the second quarter of the Gamecocks' 95-68 win over Mississippi State on Sunday. She needed to be helped to the locker room after landing awkwardly on her knee and the team did not have an update on her status immediately following the game.

With Watkins out the rest of the year, it leaves the Gamecocks thin in the frontcourt, where she had joined Chloe Kitts and Sania Feagin in the starting lineup. Freshman Joyce Edwards, who has come off the bench in all but one game this year, will likely slide into Watkins’ starting spot.

South Carolina women’s basketball forward Ashlyn Watkins sees turbulent season end

Watkins’ injury comes months after her August arrest on charges of first degree assault and battery and kidnapping. According to an arrest warrant obtained by The Athletic, Watkins was accused of assaulting someone by "forcefully grabbing her face, pulling her by her arms, and pushing her.” She also allegedly "grabbed the victim's head and forced her to walk down the hall, thus controlling her movement while preventing her from leaving."

She was released on $30,000 bond and ordered to stay 1,000 feet from the victim's home, work, school and place of worship.

South Carolina suspended Watkins for its season opener against Michigan and she did not travel with the team to the White House to celebrate its 2024 national championship. The charges were eventually dropped, at which point she returned to the team.

When Watkins did return, she made headlines for throwing down a dunk in a December game against TCU. It was her third straight season with a dunk and she’s the only player in program history to accomplish the feat.

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