When a team faces adversity, it often relies on its star players to pull through.

After a layup from USC senior guard Kara Dunn put the No. 11 Trojans (3-2) up 51-40 near the end of the third quarter in Friday’s matchup with No. 24 Notre Dame (4-1), the Fighting Irish were facing 11 points’ worth of adversity.

Though both offenses slowed down for almost a quarter of play afterward, Notre Dame had two players step up big: junior guard Hannah Hidalgo and redshirt junior guard KK Bransford. A Hidalgo buzzer-beater to end the third quarter had the Irish already back within striking distance after a 6-0 run, which grew to a 12-1 run and a tie game with help from two fourth-quarter Bransford jumpers.

On the other end, star freshman guard Jazzy Davidson had four turnovers during the Irish run. Davidson, sophomore guard Kennedy Smith and senior guard Londynn Jones — three of USC’s top four scorers — all missed shots that could’ve put Notre Dame down. Even Dunn, USC’s second-highest scorer this season, who was by far the Trojans’ bright spot Friday, couldn’t come up clutch enough despite two separate go-ahead buckets in the fourth quarter.

To cap it all off, Hidalgo, one of the best players in the nation, pulled up with two defenders in her face, two seconds to go and the game tied, sinking the shot. Hidalgo’s final points of the game, elevating her total to 22, put a dagger in USC’s hopes for a win in South Bend, Indiana, giving the Fighting Irish a 61-59 victory.

“The pressure is something that we knew was coming. We didn’t handle it well enough,” Head Coach Lindsay Gottlieb said in a clip posted on the team’s Instagram account. “It’s on us. We’ll get better from it.” 

Most of the way through its murderer’s row of a nonconference schedule, USC has certainly been tested early in a season in which it has to play without superstar junior guard JuJu Watkins, who took the year off after sustaining an ACL injury last March.

In a similar fashion to Friday’s loss, the Trojans got crushed by 17 points against No. 2 South Carolina (6-0) despite being close at halftime, as Davidson and Jones struggled. However, in USC’s ranked win over No. 16 NC State (3-3) one game before, it was Davidson’s 21 points that led the Trojans to victory.

In the absence of Watkins, Davidson is the most obvious choice to take over the star position, and the big shots and pressure that come with it. However, the top recruit has struggled with efficiency five games into her collegiate career, shooting 0.400 or below from the field in all but one game. She has been especially shaky from 3-point land, making just 5-of-30 attempts, including three entire games where she went without a trey.

While Davidson’s 14 points on 6-for-15 shooting to go along with a team-high eight rebounds and four steals showed flashes of dominance on both sides of the ball, she also turned it over eight times — her third straight game with at least four. Overall, the Trojans ended with 21 turnovers — 17 of which came from starters — to Notre Dame’s 17.

However, USC was more efficient than the Fighting Irish, shooting 46% from the field — led by Dunn’s stellar 8-for-11 performance for a team-high 21 points — to Notre Dame’s 42%, though the Trojans took 10 fewer shots. USC also dominated in 3-point shooting, shooting 16% more efficiently than the Irish, again, mostly led by Dunn’s 4-for-5 clip.

Though Dunn is averaging the team’s second-most points per game at 11.8, only behind Davidson’s 15.2, her 21-point performance is an outlier compared to her previous four starts, where she had maxed out at 12 points. 

While she has played fewer minutes than the team’s stars in Davidson and Smith, Dunn is shooting by far the most efficiently of the four Trojans with more than 50 points so far — Dunn, Davidson, Smith and Jones — and has only shot less efficiently than players with less than half of her minutes.

Despite Davidson’s struggles, it was Jones and Smith whose performances stood out as especially out of character. 

As USC’s definitive sixth player, Jones has been either very hot or very cold this season. The guard has scored double-digit points three times, including a 19-point performance against NC State, and is the team’s fourth leading scorer, though she has also had two games scoring four or fewer. On Friday, she had a season-worst performance where she failed to score a single point on 0-for-3 shooting while also turning the ball over three times in 13 minutes. 

Smith, one of USC’s only significant returners from last year with Watkins out, shot just 3-for-11 from the field for 9 points in the team’s second-most minutes at 34. Starting junior guard Malia Samuels also scored 9 points Friday, though on a more efficient 3-for-6 clip that included two 3-pointers.

The Trojans’ fifth starting spot — next to Davidson, Samuels, Smith and Dunn — is seemingly still up for grabs as sophomore forward Vivian Iwuchukwu made her first start since USC’s season opener against New Mexico State University (1-2). Iwuchukwu, who missed her only shot in 17 minutes Friday, is in a battle with junior forward Gerda Raulušaitye, who has started three games, and sophomore forward Dayana Mendes for the five-spot in the starting lineup.

Due to the committee-style rotation Gottlieb has set up for the forwards — all of which played between 12 and 18 minutes Friday — none have played more than 75 minutes total, while USC’s four main starters have played over 135 each. Jones has played more than any of the three forwards, coming off the bench to play 109 minutes so far.

Now, with two ranked losses and the bulk of Big Ten play still over a month out, the Trojans will see their schedule ease up slightly this week with bouts against unranked Tennessee Tech University (4-1) on Tuesday at 7 p.m. and Pepperdine University (3-1) on Friday at 2 p.m., both at Galen Center.