On the basketball court, the 5-9, slenderly built Blinn College forward doesn’t abide by any preconceived notions her size and slender stature may warrant.
“I just try to bring energy in everything I do,” Adrian said. “You have to be vocal; you have to be able to let loose and show your emotions on the court sometimes. You feed off what your teammates are doing and how they’re playing, and they feed off you. So, I just try to be that person my teammates can turn to for that hype and that motivation.”
Everything Adrian does on the court is by design. No amount of movement on the hardwood is wasted. On the court, she guides her teammates through plays like an aircraft marshaller leading an airplane to the runway. In the paint, she brings the grit and bravado needed to outbattle Region XIV’s biggest and baddest for crucial rebounds and loose balls.
Adrian has even fashioned her rest periods on the Blinn bench into courtside coaching opportunities.
“Every basketball team needs a Deja Adrian,” said Blinn women’s basketball coach Jeff Jenkins, now in his 20th season leading the Buccaneers. “Without the Dejas of the world, you have bad practices, you have bad video sessions, you’re not as competitive, and you lose games you shouldn’t lose. She’s like another coach on and off the court.”
In 2019, Adrian arrived in Brenham from Houston-based Aldine High School, where she and the Lady Mustangs reached the Class 6A playoffs her senior year. It was at Aldine where Jenkins got his first glimpse of the future Buccaneer, and after inviting her onto the Blinn-Brenham Campus for a team workout, was ready with a collegiate offer by day’s end.
“She was undersized. She didn’t have the most beautiful shot in the world, but she just competed in every drill,” Jenkins said. “By the end of the workout, I saw her dive on the floor for a loose ball three different times, and I decided right then and there I wanted her in my program.”
After an abbreviated seven-game run during her freshman campaign, Adrian bounced back last season to play 22 games as a sophomore and averaged 7.5 points per game with a team-leading 7.5 rebounds per outing. Through 22 games this season, Adrian is again delivering for the 23rd-ranked Buccaneers with nine points and nine rebounds per game.
“It’s all about confidence,” Adrian said. “After my injury my freshman year, it was about trusting my body and trusting myself to do the things that I needed to be able to do to be successful. Once I found that again, everything moved forward.”
Adrian’s trust in herself and her teammates is apparent. She is as quick to drive through a double-team defensive stand in the paint as she is to look for an open teammate beyond the arc.
During a recent Region XIV matchup against Panola College, Adrian found a lane to the basket, was immediately encountered with a pair of towering Filly defenders, drove through the attempted defense anyway, and upon being fouled and shoved to the floor, responded with a thunderous roar and a pair of free throws.
(Pictured center: Blinn College’s Deja Adrian)
Jenkins said efforts like those harken back to Adrian’s first workout with the Buccaneers.
“Everything we saw from that workout … she is so competitive, she’s aggressive,” Jenkins explained. “She’s always the first person in the gym and she just works, works, and works on her 15-foot jump shot, on her ball handling, on her rebounding. She’s relentless.”
The root of Adrian’s tenacity leads back to Houston.
At the age of 12, her mother Alicia Gaines died suddenly of a heart attack. Adrian, alongside her young brother and two older sisters, spent the next several years floating between homes with little help from surviving family.
Inside the gym, Adrian and her siblings found guidance, support, and eventually, an outlet to a better life. While basketbal initially served as a social life with friends and an escape from the perils of an unstable home life, Adrian said that as her talent improved, so did the prospects of a brighter future.
“The stuff we’ve gone through, it’s just going to shape and build me. Those experiences have helped me to mature faster,” she said. “I began seeing basketball as a tool to improve my life and the lives of my siblings. It became an outlet of escape for me and has really shown me that there is more for me out there than what I’ve come from.”
In May, when her time at Blinn comes to an end, Adrian hopes to continue her basketball career at the next level. She is speaking with a handful of programs and plans to pursue a degree in kinesiology once she finds a new home. After college, Adrian said she plans to use her education and experience as a collegiate basketball player to teach, coach and guide others, using the sport to foster growth and success in the same manner it nurtured her own development.
“I want to help kids who may be going through the same things I went through as a child; kids who may be struggling and just need comfort away from home and need an outlet to be successful,” said Adrian. “I had basketball and I had coaches help me in that way, so I want to do the same for others.”
Blinn has competed in intercollegiate athletics since 1903 and captured 42 NJCAA national championships since 1987.
