Kara Dunn’s leadership has Jazzy Davidson, USC believing in themselves

The sun was shining when Jazzy Davidson confided in Kara Dunn. The two were poolside on one of those fortuitous, hot Southern California days of February.

“Is college always this stressful and emotionally challenging?”

Dunn looked at her with a blunt answer: “Yeah.”

“It doesn’t get easier,” she explained to her teammate. “But you do learn how to handle certain situations better and understand what type of situations you exert that much energy and you exert that much emotional stability. You need to really stay strong.”

Dunn has become a driving force of the USC women’s basketball team in a short amount of time.

Her performance and leadership, as well as mentorship of star freshman Jazzy Davidson, have helped get the ninth-seeded Trojans (17-12 overall, 9-9 Big Ten) ready for the Big Ten Tournament, which begins with a second-round game against eighth-seeded Washington (20-9, 10-8) on Thursday.

Head coach Lindsay Gottlieb and her staff did extensive research on Dunn, a senior transfer from Georgia Tech, prior to her arrival at USC. It’s typical for the coaching staff to look into not just a player’s ability, but also her character.

“The data was there on KD as a player and her ability to be really good at a high level,” Gottlieb said, “We do our research in getting to know people and their family and who they are, but you never know quite how they’re going to be in adversity.

“We would be nowhere without KD.”

The 5-foot-11 guard was named All-Big Ten Second Team on Tuesday after averaging 17.9 points and 5.5 rebounds per game against Big Ten opponents and surpassing 1,500 career points on Jan. 29 in a win over Iowa.

The achievement capped off a seven-game stretch in which Dunn scored 20 or more points.

Davidson, who is the Big Ten Freshman of the Year, was taking the women’s college basketball world by storm in her own right during this time and finished the regular season by leading the team in every major statistical category.

She’s averaging 17.9 points per game and scored in double figures in 26 straight games this season.

But it wasn’t until after the first loss to No. 2 UCLA on Jan. 3 that the two began a bond that Dunn describes as sister-like.

“That exposed a lot of things that we probably would have brushed over or not mentioned, and I feel like it really caused us to talk together as a team,” Dunn said. “That’s how me and Jazzy became closer, and I feel like that made us have rough conversations.”

Christine Pacewicz, a PhD who studies peer communication and athlete mental health at Miami University of Ohio, has seen dynamics like this. And Dunn isn’t too far off from the science when she refers to Davidson as another sister.

“We don’t always get to choose our biological siblings, but maybe in sport we form those relationships like what we may have with a sister,” Pacewicz said.

“We have some work looking at siblings in physical activity, in sport. And sister-sister dyads have quite a bit of warmth in them. That support and being able to talk to each other – I think you can draw parallels between what you see with close friendships between two female athletes and then two sisters.”

Dunn has showered Davidson with positive affirmations this season, pulling up her confidence when it dips low. For example, the underclassman felt like her mid-range shot was off at one point this season and, after a talk with Dunn, she put up 21 points against Iowa.

The expertise in leadership comes not just from four years of playing college basketball, but also from being coached by her parents. Dunn rose above the “coach’s kid” stigma to earn respect from her teammates.

“It’s one of the hardest things to try to be a leader when your mom’s the head coach of a team,” Dunn said. “I started to find my voice more and learn how to connect with people to have that trust to where they didn’t just see me as a coach’s kid. They saw me as their friend, and someone who led by example.”

Dunn walked at senior night in USC’s final home game of the season against UCLA on Sunday evening. Her goal is to extend the Trojans’ postseason as much as possible before moving on to compete professionally and embrace the next level of USC basketball sisterhood: the alumni network.

“They produce legends here,” she said, “and legends come back and support the programs that help them become who they became.”

Big Ten Tournament

Who: No. 9 USC (17-12 overall, 9-9 Big Ten) vs. No. 8 Washington (20-9, 10-8)

When: 9 a.m. PT Thursday

Where: Gainbridge Fieldhouse, Indianapolis

TV/Radio: Big Ten Network/USCTrojans.com/Listen