Jazzy Davidsons closest friends know she can be

Before she got here to USC, it had never occurred to Jazzy Davidson how charmed her basketball upbringing had been. Growing up outdoors of Portland, practically all of her years taking part in the sport had been spent with the same tight-knit group of women — women who’d been best friends since before the fifth grade and who, after all that time, may anticipate her every transfer before she made it.

“They’re basically my sisters,” Davidson says.

They’d been that manner just about as far back as she may keep in mind. Allie, she met in kindergarten. She and Sara joined the same squad in second grade. By 10, Dylan, Reyce and Avery had been on the membership workforce, too. For the next eight years or so, up through March’s Oregon women 6A state championship, they had been inseparable, the six of them spending nearly every waking second together.

But now, a few days before the start of her freshman season at USC, Davidson is in Los Angeles, while her former teammates are scattered across the Pacific Northwest taking part in with numerous other Division I faculties. It’s an odd feeling, she admits, but a thrilling one, too — to be right here with a new workforce, persevering with her basketball journey without the ladies who’d been there the entire manner.

“Being here made me realize how comfortable I was with them,” Davidson said. “It’s definitely different now, definitely a learning experience.”

Within that well-worn dynamic, Davidson developed into one of the top girls’s hoops prospects in the nation, all while she and her friends led Clackamas High on an unprecedented, four-year run of success. Now, early in her freshman season at USC, Davidson steps into circumstances that no one would have anticipated when she signed with the varsity.

At the time, the expectation was that she may be introduced along as a proficient No. 2 while the Trojans’ generational star JuJu Watkins commanded all the surface noise and nightly double groups. But then Watkins injured her knee in March, forcing her to sit out the 2025-26 season. Suddenly, the Trojans’ top prospect also grew to become their saving grace.

No one, for the report, is saying that out loud at USC. Nor does anybody in the building count on Davidson to step seamlessly into Watkins’ footwear.

“Those are very unique shoes,” USC coach Lindsay Gottlieb says. “But the fact that Jazzy can step into our program and already just make a really unique and incredible impression on everybody is pretty wild.”

By her own admission, Davidson has never been the quickest to heat up with new people. Most outdoors of her circle would most likely describe her as “quiet” or “reserved.” It’s only once you get to know her that you actually see who she is and what she’s succesful of.

USC obtained a temporary glimpse Sunday, with the Trojans trailing by a level to No. 9 North Carolina State and 10 seconds on the clock. Coming out of a timeout, the 6-1 Davidson cut swiftly through two defenders toward the basket, caught an inbound move and, without taking a step, laid in the game-winning bucket.

The stage will get even larger on Saturday, when No. 8 USC meets No. 2 South Carolina at Crypto Arena in the first of a number of grueling assessments awaiting on a slate that consists of 4 video games against the top three groups in the Associated Press preseason top 25 ballot. Any hope of the Trojans reaching the same heights as last season hinges in half on their star freshman rapidly discovering her potential.

No one has seen Davidson fulfill that promise like the ladies who have been there since the start. As far as they’re involved, it received’t be long before the world sees what they’ve.

“If you know Jazzy,” says Allie Roden, now a freshman guard at Colorado State, “you know she can do anything she wants, pretty much.”

When Davidson’s mom noticed that her 5-year outdated daughter was unusually tall, she signed Jasmine — who would later be recognized as Jazzy — up for basketball. Roden was on that first workforce. She has seen the video evidence of the 2 of them, both still in kindergarten, launching basketballs over their heads at the backboard.

“We were terrible,” Roden says with a chuckle, “but we thought we were really great.”

Davidson moved down the road from Roden in the fourth grade, and by that level, she’d figured one thing out. Enough at least to catch the eye of Clackamas High coach Korey Landolt, whose daughter performed for the same membership program.

“I saw [Davidson] working with a trainer and just thought, ‘Huh, this kid is different,’” Landolt says.

From left to proper, Avery Peterson, Sara Barhoum, Dylan Mogel, Jazzy Davidson, Reyce Mogel, Allie Roden performed together for years, main Clackamas High in Oregon to a state championship.

(Courtesy of Reyce Mogel)

Once the others joined forces a yr later on the membership workforce Northwest Select, there wasn’t a lot anybody may do to stop them. The six women appeared to match seamlessly together on the court. Off it, Roden says, “we were inseparable pretty much as soon as we met.” She doesn’t recall their workforce dropping a recreation against their age group for two full years at one level.

It was around that time that Davidson separated herself from the pack as a prospect. She’d grown to 5-foot-10 by the seventh grade, only for the pandemic to shut down basically your entire state, including all high faculty sports activities.

So Davidson threw herself into basketball. She and Sara Barhoum, who’s now a freshman at Oregon, began figuring out together during free time between online courses, doing what she may to add strength to her spindly body. Then they’d shoot together at night time, each pushing the other to improve.

“It was a big time for me,” Davidson says. “That was when I honed in on everything.”

Two or thrice per month, the workforce would journey out of state to check themselves. On one significantly memorable journey, just the six of them entered a match in Dana Point. They ended up profitable the entire thing, beating some of the nation’s best groups, despite the fact they’d stayed up late taking part in Heads Up and had been sunburned from a seaside go to the day before.

Those center faculty journeys only cemented their bond — as effectively as Davidson’s place as a top prospect. By her freshman season, with all of them together at Clackamas High, the key was out. College coaches got here calling. Gottlieb, who had just taken the job at USC, was one.

Even then, there was a sure grace with which Davidson performed the sport — as if it flowed from her naturally. “She’s so fluid,” Gottlieb explains. “She glides.” But there was also a fearlessness in getting to the rim against a lot older, stronger gamers.

“She had to hold her own,” Landolt says. “But people couldn’t stop her inside. They couldn’t stop her outside. She was just so versatile. She could do everything.”

As a gangly freshman, Davidson stuffed the stat sheet with 22 factors, eight rebounds, 4 steals, three assists and one block per recreation on her manner to being named Oregon’s Gatorade Player of the Year. She received the award again as a sophomore … as effectively as the next two years after that.

When those 4 years had been up, Davidson was the all-time main scorer in Oregon Class 6A women basketball historical past with 2,726 factors. Still, some of her teammates contend she was even better on the defensive end.

“Jazzy is good at everything she does,” Barhoum said. “But she’s probably the best defender I’ve ever seen.”

USC guard Jazzy Davidson blocks a shot by North Carolina State’s Devyn Quigley on Nov. 9 in Charlotte, N.C.

(Lance King / Getty Images)

The women performed on the same workforce for six years when Clackamas made a run to the 6A state championship recreation. They’d spent so a lot time with each other, their coach says, that it may be “a blessing and a curse.” Sometimes, they bickered like sisters, too.

Landolt would urge them to hang around with other friends, only half-kidding. But all that time together made their connection on the court just about telepathic.

“There were so many passes I threw to Jazzy that no one else would’ve caught, but she was just there.” said Reyce Mogel, who now performs at Southern Oregon. “We were always on the same page. And not just me and Jazzy. Everybody.”

Davidson was on the bench, in foul hassle, for a long stretch of the state championship recreation against South Medford. But she delivered two key blocks in the ultimate minute as Clackamas received its first state title.

Two years later, when they returned to the state championship as seniors, Davidson was again pressured to sit for a long period after twisting her ankle. This time, her absence “took the wind out of everyone’s sails,” Landolt says. Clackamas blew a 19-point, third-quarter lead from there, even as a hobbled Davidson tried to give it a go in the ultimate minutes.

The six women discovered each other after the ultimate buzzer, heartbroken. They knew it might be the last time.

Their last report together at Clackamas: 102-14.

“We all were hugging,” Barhoum says, “and just saying to each other, we’re all off to do better things. We all made history. And now everybody is going to make history somewhere else.”

They might live aside now, but the six women, all now taking part in on separate for faculty basketball applications, still speak all the time.

“I FaceTime one of them at least every day,” Davidson says.

Her Trojan teammates are still getting to know her, still studying her tendencies. That will come with time. But the rationale she in the end selected USC, over every other top program, was how a lot it felt like home.

Through two video games, Davidson appears to have settled seamlessly into a starring function at USC, inviting the inevitable comparisons to Watkins that Gottlieb would quite keep away from.

USC guard Jazzy Davidson places up a three-point shot against North Carolina State on Nov. 9 in Charlotte, N.C.

(Lance King / Getty Images)

“You do not need to be anything other than what your best self is,” Gottlieb insists.

Her friends have seen up close how far Davidson can take a workforce at her best. But no one, not even the six of them, perceive the circumstances Davidson has stepped into fairly like Watkins.

Her advice was simple. But it still resonated with Davidson on the doorstep of the season.

“She just told me not to be anxious about any of this,” Davidson says. “You’re good. Just go play how you play, and you’ll be fine.”