South Carolina’s Ashlyn Watkins out for year with torn ACL

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 Tuesday. Watkins will have surgery in the next few weeks.

“We don’t often have injuries like this. Unfortunately, Ashlyn is out for the rest of the season.” head coach Dawn Staley she said Tuesday on her Carolina Calls show. “I know her sisters will rally around her injury and I know she will be greatly missed.” But I know Ashlyn would want us to continue and compete and try to win another national championship.

Watkins played in 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 had to be helped to the locker room after taking an awkward knee, and the team did not have an update on her status immediately after the game.

With Watkins out for the rest of the year, that leaves the Gamecocks thin in the frontcourt, where she joins Chloe Keatts 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 basketball player Ashlyn Watkins is coming off a turbulent season

Watkins’ injury comes months after her arrest in August on charges of first degree assault and battery and kidnapping. According to an arrest warrant obtained by The Athletic, Watkins is accused of assaulting someone by “forcefully grabbing her face, pulling her arms and pushing her.” She also allegedly “grabbed the victim by the head and forced her down the hall, controlling her movements and 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 the season opener against Michigan and did not travel with the team team to the White House to celebrate its national championship in 2024. The the charges were eventually droppedafter which she returned to the team.

When Watkins returned, she made headlines for a dunk in a December game against TCU. It was her third consecutive slam dunk season and she is the only player in program history to accomplish the feat.

Russell Steinberg covers Major League Baseball and the New York Liberty for ClutchPoints. A lifelong baseball and basketball player, he has written for Boardroom, SLAM, SB Nation, The Next and more. He graduated from NIU in 2012 and still returns to serve as the announcer and occasional broadcaster for the school’s basketball and volleyball teams.