Molly Davis, headband and all, playing huge for Iowa women
By Susan Harman
IOWA CITY, Iowa – Suspend belief for a minute.
Imagine Molly Davis, international woman of mystery. Her cloak and dagger take the form of impossible finishes on the fastbreak where she somehow tames a Caitlin Clark bullet pass, twists her body and manages to throw the ball into the basket from the photographers’ row.
Lying flat on her back just outside the lane she clutches a rebound, saves the possession and enables a Gabbie Marshall basket.
She’s at the top of the key with defenders on her right and left, both of whom are at least six inches taller, and she suddenly splits the difference, gets to the lane and scores on her floater. That floater has cleared the 6-foot-6 Ayoka Lee, among others. Lee being nearly a foot taller than Davis.
It’s still Davis near the free-throw line setting a screen among the big kids freeing a dashing Clark for a layup down the right side. And again among the trees she blocks 6-3 Alexis Markowski’s shot.
But you know what? You don’t have to suspend belief because that’s who she is. She may indeed be a mystery to the outside world, undersized, quiet, competent and often underestimated. Molly Davis, our Molly, headband and all, is more than you think she is. She’s not just some kid who wandered on to campus from a “mid-major” program to hold Clark’s water bottle.
She grew up with a family involved in athletics. Her father Ted made a deal with the Boys & Girls Club in Lafayette, Ind., that he would coach as long as Molly was permitted to play on brother Trevor’s team.
“Athletically she was always able to do that, but she was playing up a little bit and had the opportunity to play with her brother,” Ted Davis said.
Trevor was 6; Molly was 4.
Molly watched while Trevor played youth football, but the family had games in the yard too. Molly was an accomplished receiver with speed and good hands. Ted said she played soccer but always wanted to play football. Molly entered the Punt, Pass, and Kick competition and went to the state finals at halftime of a Detroit Lions game.
Her brother was a key in her athletic development but not in the way you might think.
“They have always been very close, but because both of them are so competitive, that drive to win caused a lot of problems in our family when they were young,” Ted Davis said. “We used to have mini hoops that were about five or six foot high, and we had two in our living room. And the number of fights we had and the number of things that got broken, I had to put a rule in place. Number one, you two can no longer play against each other; you have to be on the same team.”
Ted, the assistant principal at the time in Midland, Mich., steered the two into the same PE/weight training class together. Football games in class awarded twice as many points if a touchdown were scored by a girl. Everybody wanted Molly because of her quickness. Trevor was the quarterback and Molly was the receiver.
The sibling bond overtook the sibling rivalry. Eventually.
“We kind of used that time to kind of make each other better, and compete against each other while we were training,” Molly said. “We had a common goal, and it was really cool. He’s shaped me into the player and the person I am today.”
“Every day Molly and I went to the gym together with my dad; he’d rebound for us,” Trevor Davis said. “She played with me until I was I think in the seventh grade, all the way until she was 11 or 12.”
Trevor said Molly’s speed and athletic ability enabled her to hang with the older boys. “We had a lower backboard at a middle school gym, and she could touch that before I could,” he said.
“Molly had shown talent and athleticism at a young age, but you know there’s a lot of kids that are talented and athletic in second and third grades,” said Kyle Theisen, Molly’s high school basketball coach. “But she had a work ethic from that young age. She always wanted to be in the gym, always wanted to be in shooting.”
Part of that work was recognizing that she was undersized and finding ways to compete in a sport of big people.
“Height has never really held her back,” Theisen said. “And she’s so good with angles and keeping the ball away from taller defenders.”
Theisen said Davis already had her floater by the time she got to high school. Ted, who also served as Molly’s travel team coach, said former Northwood University coach Bob Taylor introduced the shot to both Molly and Trevor in some clinics.
“Once I saw that I knew that that was going to be super important for Molly as she played at higher levels,” Ted Davis said. “So I would make her do floaters in practice, and I would put my hand up, and there were times I would grab a broom and stick it in the air and she’d shoot over it.”
Molly was a star at Dow High School in Midland. Theisen said she scored 20 points in her first game as a freshman. But she was never about scoring tons of points. She adjusted her game to fit the situation.
It was early in Davis’s high-school career when Central Michigan University coach Sue Guevara honed in on her as a potential recruit. Raina Harmon, a current assistant at Iowa, was on Guevara’s staff at the time.
“Right from the get-go you could see she was kind of explosive, very crafty, high IQ point guard,” Harmon said.
CMU had some outstanding point guards, and the coaches saw Molly as fitting in that mold.
“We needed somebody to kind of follow up that was going to have a similar style, similar swagger, I think that plays with… she’s super confident; she’s very poised, and you can see that in her at a very young age,” Harmon said.
CMU was close to home and otherwise a good fit even though Guevara retired before Davis played a game for her. But after three years Davis needed a different situation. Her junior season the team was 4-25 and teammates were transferring left and right necessitating tryouts from the volleyball team. At times CMU had only five scholarship players.
“I just knew I had to put myself first, and I wasn’t happy both mentally and physically,” she said.
Molly didn’t really know what she wanted from the portal; she was not necessarily looking at Power-5 conference schools.
Enter Raina Harmon
Harmon was watching the portal during the Final Four coaches’ meetings knowing Iowa needed a backup point guard in the wake of Megan Meyer’s transfer to Drake.
“I happened to see (Davis’s) name pop up, and I called our staff immediately,” Harmon said.
Iowa was frank about the situation. All five starters were back; minutes would be hard to come by and Iowa City is a long way from home. But coaches thought if they could get her on campus they’d have a chance, and Harmon provided a security blanket of sorts, having known Davis since she was in eighth grade.
“So she came and she’s a huge Kansas City Chiefs fan, and I would say that 50 percent of our team are Chiefs fans,” Harmon said. “That was very helpful. But I think she could see what we were building.”
Enter brother Trevor.
“Molly basically did it all at Central Michigan,” he said. “I mean, she’s the all-time points-per-game scorer. If she’d played a full five years she would have broken a lot more records. But Molly hated to lose.
“What I think helped her a lot was just her teammates and the culture. She mentioned how Kate Martin was the first one to reach out to her. They welcomed her with open arms, and I think that got Molly out of her shell right from the start.”
Her mother and father thought it was just time for her to stretch her wings, be on her own and push herself.
Molly’s first year at Iowa she averaged 19.9 minutes in Big Ten play and 16.7 overall, probably more than she was led to believe would be hers.
But this year, a summer of dedication to her fitness and her game boosted her confidence, Davis is a starter and averages 26 minutes. She’s shooting 61 percent in Big Ten play and .375 from 3-point range. She is a major contributor to a top-10 team. And she’s making those unmistakable Molly Davis plays. Just like she did in the back yard and the living room.
The only mystery is how we didn’t see her this way from the beginning.