LOS ANGELES — A clever little analogy, she thought.
Could be cute, she thought.
Maybe kinda cool, she thought.
Eleven and the Party? JuJu and the Nerds? Netflix’s hit show and USC’s hit women’s basketball team?
Eleven. No. 12.
El. Ju. (If you’re friends.)
Jane. Judea. (If you’re the government.)
The buzz cut, the bun. The ability to move objects in cool and unexplainable ways, to break arms and ankles. And, bruh, the merchandising!
And, best, the crew. The cast of rootable role players, without whom the premise wouldn’t work. Because you’ve got to have someone with a slingshot ready to fire from the corner. Someone to run interference. To crack jokes. To teach the young phenom some things about the world.
To stick by, to yell it with their chests: “She’s our friend and she’s crazy!” To step up and be the heroes on occasion – like last week, when JuJu Watkins fouled out and “the nerds” saved the day with one big play after another in USC’s double-overtime victory at Arizona.
Came through when we needed her most.
One more look at this clutch triple from @kaylacp_! pic.twitter.com/116A46rFfq
— USC Women’s Basketball (@USCWBB) March 1, 2024
So I went to a recent practice for a behind-the-scenes look at the players starring alongside freshman sensation JuJu Watkins for the fifth-ranked Trojans – whose season continues Thursday night at the Pac-12 Tournament in Las Vegas, where second-seeded USC will face the winner of Arizona and Washington’s first-round tussle.
“Nerds” is Coach Lindsay Gottlieb’s endearing term to describe her trio of Ivy League graduate transfers: Kaitlyn Davis, McKenzie Forbes and Kayla Padilla, high-IQ hoopers with degrees from Columbia, Harvard and Penn, respectively. Gottlieb gets away with calling them that, ’cause she’s one of them, a former baller at Brown.
You can find interviews of Davis – the 6-foot forward from Connecticut who recorded the first triple-double in Lions’ history – talking about having an affinity for art and music. But the nerdy thing about her, she tells the newspaper lady: “I read the news a lot. Like, a lot. A lot. Washington Post, New York Times. I don’t know what be on Instagram, but I know what’s in the news.”
KD’s gonna stuff the stat sheet every time
16 points, 9 rebounds, 4 steals and 3 assists for 2⃣4⃣ vs the Wildcats yesterday pic.twitter.com/Y7XVzTjlDR
— USC Women’s Basketball (@USCWBB) March 1, 2024
And then there’s Padilla, the high-volume scoring guard-turned-defensive stopper from Torrance, a 5-9 Excel spreadsheet whiz, writer and publisher whose COVID projects included starting her own Players Tribune-esque site for collegians (check out “The Sideline Post”) and adding drums to the array of instruments she plays. She loves her some Bruce Sprinsteen.
And Forbes, the 6-foot forward from Folsom whose future – whenever she’s done hooping – likely is in an NBA front office. She’s got no time for discovering music or catching up on shows, really, because she’s too busy nerding out on basketball. Binging podcasts, watching games, studying the sport. (And absorbing what’s happening in the real world, too.)
Wait, so, I have to ask: “Kenzie, have you seen ‘Stranger Thin–’”
She’s sharp, this shooter Padilla, who has buried 45.7% of her 3-point attempts this season, including so many that were so timely that, to Watkins, it feels like she hits at a “90%” success rate. Two moves ahead here, KP, asking almost before I can finish saying the title of the show: “Are we like the group of kids or something? And JuJu’s Eleven?”
Uh.
“Is there a ‘Stranger Things’ reference?” Forbes jumps in, looking at me like I’ve accidentally unmuted myself on Zoom.
“I don’t know yet,” I hear myself answer, thinking, no, not anymore.
“What do you mean?” Forbes asks. “There is, huh!?’
What? Nooo. C’mon, that would be so nerdy.
BRILLIANT PLAY-CALLING
It was a stroke of brilliance, bringing aboard these three.
Think about it: If you want to set up Watkins to succeed in Year One, before a starry freshman recruiting class files in next season, what’s the prudent move?
Surround her with savvy veterans. Cast teammates with impressive on-court acumen and important off-court life experience, women who can organize an offense so the freshman doesn’t have to, or offer tips about, say, attacking an opponent who’s in foul trouble – who are wise enough to recognize what’s needed of them, to embrace the opportunity.
Allow Kenzie to have this dance
@Pac12Network pic.twitter.com/iFjH3kQ41h
— USC Women’s Basketball (@USCWBB) January 20, 2024
And, importantly, who can play.
And Davis, Forbes and Padilla? They can play. Maybe you wouldn’t expect it from Ivy Leaguers who are mostly overlooked nationally, but maybe you should. These are three who chose the hard way, workers who signed up for the most rigorous of college experiences, to be ballplayers at elite universities where the main thing is the main thing – and it ain’t athletics.
They’re proud of that. Darn right.
“The resources are so vastly different from here to there,” said Forbes, an All-Pac-12 selection who dropped 36 points on Long Beach State this season, and 23 and 18 on UCLA. “There was a thing at Harvard, ‘Oh, we’re giving snacks now to our athletes!’ And I remember, you could only have, literally, one granola bar. We’d be like, ‘Can we have two?’ No. Here you have a whole room you walk in and I could take 20 every day, if I wanted.”
Not that any of the three would’ve wanted a different path, mind you: “There’s no me here without me at Penn,” is how Padilla, once a Bishop Montgomery star and 2019 Daily Breeze Girls Basketball Player of the Year, put it.
“It’s just,” Davis said, “you appreciate it more.”
And so, weird as it still might be for their former teammates to see, there they are – KP, KD and Kenzie – united on the same side, starting alongside Watkins and standout center Rayah Marshall. Foes turned friends, members now of the same basketball family.
Utterly familiar with one another’s games, they’re all three hungry for more than granola bars – because they’ve spent the past few years knocking each another out of NCAA Tournament consideration, watching bitterly as Princeton got to go dancing season after season.
And, oh, how they’d relish a date with the Tigers now, Padilla asking the tournament selection committee for a favor: “Put us against Princeton.”
Davis, co-signing: “Literally.”
And Forbes, for the record: “Put it in the tabloids: We want Princeton.”
Gottlieb isn’t quite so gung-ho when she hears about their joint request: “That would be a fun story, but I don’t necessarily want Princeton; they’re good!”
Whomever USC draws, they’ll have to do more than scheme for Watkins. Because she has her friends with her, keeping opponents honest.
“I just have so much trust in them as leaders and as players,” said Watkins, named the Pac-12’s Freshman of the Year on Tuesday. “I’m gonna cry when they leave, honestly. They’re all I can ask for in leaders. They’ve taught me so much and they’re just my dawgs.”
As well as it’s worked out, Gottlieb said it wasn’t necessarily the plan to bring in Ivy Leaguers to play with Watkins, it’s just so happened that she wound up bringing in three Ivy Leaguers.
The right three Ivy Leaguers.
Outstanding Casting, if you ask me. And probably also if you asked Carmen Cuba, the Emmy-award casting director who recruited those kids who made such a great on-screen team.
So, yes, ladies, there is your “Stranger Things” reference.
From left, USC women’s basketball players McKenzie Forbes, Kaitlyn Davis and Kayla Padilla – three graduate transfers from the Ivy League – have helped JuJu Watkins, not pictured, establish the Trojans as a top five team in the nation as they head into the Pac-12 tournament. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)