Bringing her feisty fire: Baylor's Blackwell giving it her all in final college season

Aijha Blackwell has nothing to lose.

After three years at Missouri without a major postseason appearance and one at Baylor that was largely lost due to injury, the fifth-year senior is putting everything she has into her last year as a college basketball player.

“I have never played in the NCAA Tournament,” Blackwell said. “It would mean the world. Of course, I’ve watched them. My eyes have been glued to the TV the last four years wishing I would be in one.

“I can’t wait to give it all I’ve got. Four years of blood, sweat and tears, I’m ready to pour it all out.”

So far, so good.

Blackwell and the Bears got off to the second-best in program history this season. They were one of the last three unbeaten teams in the country, have four wins over ranked teams and have been in the AP Poll every week.

“This (season) is everything for her,” Blackwell’s mom, Amy, said. “This kid has always dreamed of playing in the WNBA. She wants to play how she used to play, and I can tell that she wants that, but she’s just not healthy enough to get to that point. Everything is on the line right here.”

Every good team has a player who can take the aggression level up a notch. Multiple times this season for Baylor, including games at home against TCU and on the road at Kansas, that’s been Blackwell.

“Anyone who knows AB knows that you want her on your team, and you don't want to play against her,” sophomore Bella Fontleroy said. “She's feisty. She just has this presence on the court (that) you have to respect her, or she'll make you respect her.”

It’s a role Blackwell is more than happy to fill.

Part of that attitude comes from how Blackwell grew up just outside of St. Louis. One of seven siblings, there was always a game going on at her house, be it basketball in the driveway or football or baseball in the backyard.

“It was competitive,” Blackwell said. “It molded me and shaped me into a tough player.”

Amy has had multiple holes in the wall that she’s needed to fix over the years. And it’s not just physical sports, even card games can divulge into chaos.

“When they play, we already know, we’re gonna need a ref,” Amy Blackwell said. “We never say die. I hoped I modeled that for them growing up having gone through what we went through as a unit.”

Blackwell was a five-star recruit and the No. 1 prospect in Missouri coming out of high school in 2019 and won a gold medal with the USA National Team at the FIBA U18 Championships in 2018.

She said part of the reason she picked Missouri was her dad, Ernest, who played football for the Tigers for four seasons and was drafted by the Kansas City Chiefs.

He passed away when Aijha was three years old, but is the reason why she wears No. 33. It was even briefly un-retired ahead of her freshman year at Missouri so she could wear the same number her dad did.

“Her dad had that same eye of the tiger in him, that same look in his eye,” Amy said. “They even have the same stride. I’ve seen spurts of it when she came back from her leg injury. I think she inherited that determination from both of us.”

Blackwell didn’t disappoint in her three years with the Tigers, averaging more than 14 points each season, and finishing second in the country, grabbing an average of 13 rebounds per game as a junior in 2021-22.

Two of Blackwell’s three seasons with the Tigers were losing seasons, and they didn’t make the NCAA Tournament during her time in Columbia.

“I think I did big things at Missouri, but I wish our seasons could’ve turned out differently,” Blackwell said. “I think I left an impact on the community at Missouri outside of the basketball court, which was big for me.”

Blackwell carried that high-level play to Waco, averaging nearly 20 points and six rebounds in her first two games with Baylor.

With about two minutes left in the third game of the season against SMU, she went down with a knee injury. She appeared in five more games but didn’t play more than 11 minutes.

“It was devastating because I never had a significant injury,” Blackwell said. “It took a toll on me mentally, but I soon realized that my teammates and coaches made it easy for me to be around. I got a chance to study the game in a different way by sitting on the bench.”

This year for the Bears, Blackwell has started nine games (she missed two with a foot injury) and is averaging over 9.1 points and 7.1 rebounds per game, good for second-highest on the team.

“Aijha is just relentless,” Baylor head coach Nicki Collen said. “People saw it early (at Baylor), but not for very long. When Aijha is in shape, she’s a bull in a china shop.”

Blackwell’s WNBA dreams will continue to persist. Collen was the WNBA Coach of the Year in 2018 after leading the Atlanta Dream to the playoffs and prides herself on running a system at Baylor that prepares players for the next level.

But one last year in college, Blackwell is going to keep battling.

“You need someone on your team that is willing to go to war and have that feistiness about them,” Blackwell said. “I’ve been that type of player my whole life.”