4 players who will lead women’s college basketball after the Caitlin Clark era

Women’s college basketball headlines were dominated by former Iowa Hawkeyes superstar Caitlin Clark for the past several years, but she’s taken her talents to the WNBA. The collegiate game is in good hands, though, as four young women are poised to grab the mantle as the sport’s best during the 2024-2025 season. All statistics are sourced from Sports Reference.

Most of the players we’re going to cover on this list are supreme scorers. Hidalgo certainly fits in that category, but her unique claim to fame comes on the defensive end of the floor. She led all women’s NCAA Division I players in steals in 2023-2024, as a freshman.

Hidalgo’s father, Orlando, said that she’s played with a ferocity since she was a little girl. “A lot of kids feared her, because she was so aggressive,” he told AP News. “She would dive for the ball, she was an intense, lock-down defender even then. It’s rare to see someone make the same effort on offense and the same effort on defense.”

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Hidalgo only stands at 5’6”, so she isn’t usually making an impact near the rim defensively. Instead, she’s made life miserable for opposing point guards bringing up the ball against her. Notre Dame’s website also points out that she’s an engaged help defender off the ball, as she communicates and pays attention to the entire floor.

Despite her size, Hidalgo is still aggressive on the offensive end of the floor. As SB Nation wrote, “she uses it to her advantage dribbling between defenders and not afraid to go in and take contact near the rim.”

With Angel Reese having departed for the WNBA and Hailey Van Lith transferring to TCU, Johnson is the star of the show at LSU. It’s a role that she’s been preparing well for in her first two seasons with the Tigers. ESPN notes that she scored 20 points or more in six of her final eight games last season.

Johnson hasn’t made the top five of many best player power rankings ahead of the college basketball season. Sports Illustrated believes that this is an oversight, and it makes sense. They wrote, “however, it is only a matter of time before Johnson’s name is mentioned next to theirs (the best players in women’s college basketball).”

With an expanded role as a junior, Johnson is set to take off. Sports Illustrated noted that she “possesses a combination of speed, scoring and ball handling that is difficult to emulate.” At this juncture, she might be known more as a rapper, but she seems poised to let her play do the talking for her this year.

The Watkins hype is real, and it’s only growing. Basketball Hall of Famer Charles Barkley believes that Watkins is the next women’s basketball sensation. He said on a podcast, “I tell all them bitter, angry girls in the WNBA who are upset about Caitlin Clark to move over more because JuJu is special.”

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Watkins told USA Today, “When I decided to commit, it was to kind of bring that winning legacy back and that excitement around USC women’s basketball and LA basketball in general. It’s just been really, really exciting to see it all come together.” She’s helped the Trojans join the national championship conversation.

Watkins is a Los Angeles native, so she’s fully invested in representing her hometown. She averaged an outstanding 27 points per game as a freshman last year, which makes fans wonder what she can possibly do for an encore. ESPN wrote that despite the lofty outlook she had as a freshman, Watkins “still managed to surpass expectations of just how dominant and transformative she would be in year one.”

Andscape’s Justin Tinsley wrote a piece in March 2024 saying, “JuJu Watkins’ time isn’t coming. It’s here.” If it was here in the spring of 2024, then Watkins is set to light the sport on fire during the 2024-2025 season. It would not be surprising to see her shatter longstanding NCAA records this year.

SB Nation wrote that Bueckers “makes the game of basketball look too easy with an effortless style of play that almost looks like she sees the game in slow motion.” The only thing that has slowed Bueckers down is injuries, as she was forced to miss much of the 2021-2022 season and all of the 2022-2023 campaign.

She tore her ACL in August 2022, and it’s become a defining moment for her in her basketball career. Bueckers told ESPN before the 2022-2023 campaign, “I want to be the type of player that I was before, pre-injury, but better. I have those expectations for myself, so that’s where I want to be.”

If Bueckers was suffering from ill-effects of her ACL injury in 2023-2024, it was hard to tell. She averaged nearly 22 points per game, and suited up for 39 games for the Huskies. She also shot an impressive 41 percent from three point range, in addition to contributing in many other areas of the game.

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Bueckers will not only have to show her chops as a leader by her unwavering determination—she’ll need to be able to guide younger teammates during the biggest moments of the season. Bueckers is projected as the number one overall pick in the 2025 WNBA Draft, but her intangibles are going to be just as important as her ability this season.