Mississippi State player disables Instagram comments after getting hateful messages over JuJu Watkins' injury

When JuJu Watkins went down with an injury after being fouled in transition in the first quarter of Monday night's Mississippi State-USC matchup, the tone shifted dramatically inside the Galen Center in Los Angeles. What fans had hoped would be an exciting send-off for their top-seeded Trojans turned into a tense, emotional scene after seeing their star player suffer what was eventually diagnosed as a torn ACL. 

Mississippi State bore the brunt of that frustration from the USC faithful, as fans booed every time they touched the ball the rest of the first half. The game remained physical and tense throughout, and some players had to be separated after exchanging words in the handshake line. USC's frustrations were understandable, as their path to a national championship got exponentially more difficult without their best player, but the play Watkins got hurt on didn't appear to be anything of malicious intent. 

After the game, Mississippi State coach Sam Purcell unfortunately knew what was coming for Chandler Prater, the player who committed the foul on the play Watkins was injured. Purcell offered his condolences to Watkins but also asked for fans not to come after Prater on social media.

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"We don't play to hurt, we play to compete and that's just an unfortunate situation," Purcell said. "There was no harm, and I hope us as a society, I know social media can be ugly, that you understand that the other lady that was involved that's on my team is a woman of class. She's comes from a family too of loving parents, I'm sure she is remorseful and obviously didn't want to have that happen. I hope that we understand as a society that it was a thoughtful apology and don't take it further than it needs to. On behalf of the Bulldogs, again, we're praying for her recovery because she's the ultimate competitor and we want to see her back on that court."

That plea unfortunately did not stop fans from leaving vulgar comments on Prater's Instagram page, and the Mississippi State guard has had to disable comments on posts to prevent further harassment. Mississippi State issued a statement to the Clarion Ledger regarding the backlash Prater has received online. 

"To reiterate what coach [Sam] Purcell said following last night's game, it was an unfortunate situation during a basketball play and our thoughts are with JuJu Watkins as she recovers. We recognize that emotions run high in competitive sports, but there is no excuse for personal attacks or harassment online toward the young women in our program. Mississippi State will continue to support all of our student-athletes, both on and off the court."

It was sadly all too predictable that this would happen, as we've seen countless athletes receive threats and harassment on social media over things that happen between the lines during a game. Seeing Watkins get hurt was devastating for not just USC fans but women's basketball fans as a whole, as the tournament lost a bit of its excitement seeing one of the biggest stars of the sport get hurt and it's likely she misses most, if not all, of next season as well. The cruelty of sports is that injuries happen in the run of play, and it's not fair or right for fans to blame Prater for an unfortunate incident on the court.