It’s football season. But let’s be real: No one cares. 

OK — maybe some people care. Just not the now-one-person editorial board of “Sports for Dummies.” A moment of silence for Heydy Vasquez, my former co-writer. They say when you graduate, you die. Or something like that.

So while the rest of campus pretends to understand a 3-4 defense, I’m spending this column on the only USC Athletics storyline that has kept me up at night: the fact that senior guard JuJu Watkins and sophomore guard Jazzy Davidson are about to share a court this season. 

If you’ve been living under a rock — a warm, football-shaped rock — here’s the catch-up: Watkins tore her ACL in the 2025 NCAA Tournament and sat out all of last season. She was cleared to return to practice June 29, and by every account she looks, in Head Coach Lindsay Gottlieb’s words, “stronger, faster, in her best shape ever.” 

Meanwhile, then-freshman Davidson was left holding the bag while Watkins rehabbed, sweeping the national freshman awards. Davidson was honored with the USBWA’s Tamika Catching Award and The Athletic’s National Freshman of the Year, plus Big Ten Freshman of the Year and a spot on the All-Big Ten First Team as the team’s only freshman. 

Her national trophies nearly parallel the ones Watkins won as a freshman two years earlier — back when USC still played in the Pac-12 — before Watkins spent her sophomore year soaking up accolades including the Naismith Trophy, the John R. Wooden Award and Big Ten Player of the Year. 

Same hardware, same school, one alpha handing it down to the next like a family heirloom. Now they’re both healthy, both on the same roster and I’m wondering … Will they have chemistry?

Friendship-wise, they’re more than fine. The real question is mathematical. It’s a thing called usage rate, and it’s the closest thing basketball has to a love language. 

The dummy-friendly explanation: Usage rate is the share of a team’s possessions a player “uses up” while they’re on the floor — every shot taken, every free throw earned, every turnover coughed up. A high-usage player is the one through which the whole offense flows; they’re the one with the ball in their hands when the shot clock hits five, and everyone else clears out to watch.

The problem is that both Davidson and Watkins are high-usage players: As a freshman, Watkins’ usage rate was 42.7% — one of the highest in the country. The last time we saw Watkins on the floor, she averaged just under 24 points a game on a 32.7% usage rate as the sun that the entire USC offense orbited. 

Then Davidson showed up and, with Watkins gone, ran the operation herself — posting a 29.5% usage rate of her own — averaging 17.9 points, 5.6 rebounds and 4.1 assists a game, as well as scoring double digits in 30 of 32 games. 

Two suns. One basketball. And add No. 1 recruit freshman guard Saniyah Hall in the mix. You see the issue. 

This is where a lot of great-on-paper backcourts go to die. You can’t have two players who both need the ball to be great, because there is, tragically, only one ball — someone has to learn how to be dangerous without it. In NBA terms, this is what took James Harden and Russell Westbrook an entire season to sort-of-not-figure -out in Houston. 

Luckily for this alpha duo, I’ve mentally installed myself as their unofficial offensive coordinator, and it’s not wraps for them yet. Davidson can pass the ball; that 4.1 assists statistic is the tell, especially with a weaker supporting cast. She isn’t just a scorer; she’s a guard who can run an offense. Davidson can be the connector while Watkins is the finisher, and the finisher when Watkins is the connector. That’s the dream — not one alpha and one sidekick, but two switch hitters.

Last season, Davidson was the only Division I player — men’s or women’s — to average at least two steals and two blocks per game. That means she can guard bigger, tougher opponents, so Watkins doesn’t have to burn her energy chasing the other team’s best scorer, saving her legs for the part where she scores at least 24 points a game. 

This brings me to my one act of journalism-adjacent advocacy: Last season, Davidson was criticized as if the Trojans’ 18-14 record was her personal failing — as if one 19-year-old could single-handedly replace a reigning Naismith winner. She was a single very good player being asked to support one of the best basketball programs in the world, and she still won Freshman of the Year doing so. Basketball is not a solo activity. 

When Watkins comes back, and Davidson can finally slot into the role she was meant for, the people who dogged her will eat their words. 

Could it go sideways? Of course. Look at what happened with Harden and Westbrook. A one-season miracle, and the plug was pulled. Now, Watkins and Davidson are nothing like them off the court. But on the court, the point still stands. Chemistry doesn’t come pre-built.

But I’ve run the numbers — the real ones, the kind that are pure of heart — and I’m not worried. An assist is just usage you chose to give away, and women’s basketball has never been afraid of an extra pass — the magnanimous, share-the-rock style that is the best version of ball there is. 

Their men’s basketball counterparts needed a decade of analytics to learn that teamwork really does make the dream work.

Julia Ho is a senior writing about sports for newcomers and skeptics alike in her column, “Sports for Dummies,” which runs every other Wednesday. She is also a chief copy editor and the staff development director at the Daily Trojan.