Especially when coming home means going to UD Arena, where she and her 10th-ranked Michigan State Spartans take on the Dayton Flyers women’s basketball team tonight in the season opener for both schools.
“I love UD Arena,” said the former Chaminade Julienne hoops star, a former Ohio Miss Basketball and now a three-time captain of the Spartans.
“We had some real battles on that court. We’d play Alter or Carroll in the Cage Classic. And we had a big game with Beavercreek there, when we had Brandi Hoskins and they had Alison Bales.
“I don’t think I’ve ever lost there.”
And tonight — while the talented UD team will have home-court advantage — MSU, a Sweet 16 tournament team last season, will be favored.
Yet, while the Spartans feature 6-foot-9 Allyssa DeHaan — who has blocked 257 shots the past two seasons and is on pace to shatter the NCAA record for career blocks — it is Jefferson, the 6-1 redshirt senior, who is the heart and soul of the team.
She’s also a favorite of Spartans fans.
“If you watch her up there (in East Lansing),” said Sheryl Jefferson, Aisha’s mom, “it looks like she could run for mayor.”
Schooling the boys
Growing up initially in Trotwood, Aisha remembers as an 8-year-old watching Chicago Bulls games on television with her dad, Abdul Melson, a former Cleveland East Tech basketball standout.
“I loved Scottie Pippen, the way he slashed through the lane,” Jefferson said. “Then I’d go outside and play against guys and try the same moves. My dad had no idea I could play, but one day one of his friends told him, ‘Your daughter’s out there battling the guys, you gotta see it.’ He did and that’s when he got me on the Dayton Mohawks team with Brandie (Hoskins).
“We were an all-girls team but we played in a boys league and those guys didn’t take it easy on us. .... But that just made it better.”
She went on to be part of the nationally acclaimed Dayton Lady HoopStars and became one of the most celebrated players of a CJ program that has produced many Division I college talents.
In her four seasons at CJ — where she scored over 1,100 points — the Eagles went 99-7, won two state titles, were runners-up once and twice were ranked No. 1 in the nation in the USA Today poll.
And yet some of her best hoops stories here involve a couple of boys who went on to their own basketball fame.
“When I was around sixth grade, I played at Westwood on a team with Daequan Cook,” she said of the Miami Heat guard out of Dunbar High. “I was the only girl on that team.”
Asked if she still held her own with the boys, she started laughing.
“I used to play against Derrick Brown,” she said of her fellow CJ alum, now a rookie with the Charlotte Bobcats.
“I was 13, maybe 14 — that was before his big growth spurt — and we stood eye to eye. I used to kill him. Just kill him. He used to be really skinny and he was soft. Really soft. He just wanted to shoot from the outside.
“The two of us still joke about it now.”
Overcoming injuries
In 1995, Sheryl Jefferson said she was diagnosed S.L.E. lupus, a noncurable, chronic autoimmune tissue disease that attacks the internal organs, joints and blood vessels.
“The doctors said I wouldn’t live 10 years and I was worried I wouldn’t see my kids graduate high school,” she said. “Well, I’ve made it almost 15 and I’ve seen a lot more than I figured.”
A lot of it has been thanks to Aisha, who graduated from Michigan State with a B.A. in communications last May.
“Her basketball has been a real ride for us,” Sheryl said. “It started back in high school when Disney did that TV show on them. And it’s been wild at Michigan State. I was just up there for Midnight Madness. They were doing a Salute to the ’70s and she was the last one to come out. She jitterbugged.
“Now comes this game back in Dayton. I want to thank Suzy Marchant, her coach, for bringing ’Isha home. A lot of family and friends and people from CJ are gonna be there.”
Aisha appreciates the game, as well: “First off, we’re playing Dayton because they have a great program and they’ll be a great test for us. But I also am thankful they brought me back here to play. I’m sure some people are wondering how I’m doing.”
Playing through injury and pain much of her career, she’s been in 100 games for the Spartans and started 77.
That’s meant enduring a dislocated shoulder her freshman season, tearing a ligament in her right knee as a sophomore, missing the next season with a torn ACL of the right knee, tearing a ligament in her left knee last season and now — in this her fifth season at MSU — coming back from knee surgery, a process that likely will limit her minutes early on.
With all that, she’s still scored 935 points and grabbed 526 rebounds as a Spartan.
Along the way she’s also helped keep a long-standing Dayton presence on MSU sports teams.
“I was in grade school when Andre Hutson — he was in my sister’s class — went from Trotwood-Madison to play basketball for Michigan State.”
She said three CJ grads have been at MSU during her time there: “Brandon McKinney (football) was here one year and Paul Harker was done playing, but he was a grad assistant with the football team. And, of course, Javon (Ringer) was here with me.”
And now Adreian Payne, the trumpeted 6-foot-10 basketball player from Jefferson High, will take her place next year.
“When they were recruiting him, one of the men’s coaches came over and said, ‘We got a kid in here from Dayton, how about talking to him?’ Then he said, ‘Let me ask you something else. What is it about Dayton and Michigan State?’
“I told him, ‘Hey, we got a little pipeline going.’
“I didn’t know anything about Payne. I noticed he was tall, but I gotta say he was a little skinny. I came up to him and said, ‘What’s up, Dayton?’ I told him, ‘You need to come here. You’ll have some fun and you can make a real name for yourself here.’ ”
Just like she did.
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