AUSTIN (KXAN) — It wasn’t Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals, but Texas junior forward DeYona Gaston had her own version of Michael Jordan’s famous “flu game” in the opening round of the NCAA women’s basketball tournament Friday at Moody Center.
Gaston scored 11 points and pulled down 10 rebounds off the bench for the Longhorns in an 82-42 blowout win over Drexel and was a game-time decision because she “woke up pretty bad,” Friday morning. She said she got sick Thursday night and maybe slept a couple of hours before going to Moody Center for the game.
“I didn’t do any shootaround and kind of rested and didn’t warm up a lot,” she said. “Coach (Vic Schaefer) came in here and told me if I wanted to take this opportunity, then I needed to take it instead of not playing. I thought maybe I should gut it out, and I did.”
It’s not the first time Texas has been hit with a bug this season. Schaefer said some of the players felt ill during the Big 12 Conference tournament, but with Gaston this time around, he knew things weren’t great when the first person he saw Friday was one of the trainers.
“DeYona’s sickness kind of came out of left field,” he said. “She had to go see the doctor this morning and it was during our shootaround. When she came back, I told her to stay away but the doc said she didn’t have a fever and wasn’t contagious. She was out an hour and a half before the game getting some shots up, and she was struggling.”
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While Gaston was lying down in the training room with a towel over her head, Schaefer asked her a simple yet loaded question.
“D, what do you think?” he said.
As she sat up, Schaefer said, Gaston replied, “Let me see if I can warm up a little bit.”
She was able to and provided a big boost off the bench for the Longhorns.
“I give that kid a lot of credit. I didn’t expect her to play. She looked bad,” he said. “I’m so proud of her because she ended up with a double-double. She’ll look back on this down the line in her career, or at work in the real world and realize, ‘I’m OK.’ Everybody can’t work on their best days, right? If all we do is go to work on days we feel great, we’d probably have a hard time keeping a job. I’m proud of her. I really am.”
Gaston was part of a dominant interior presence for the Longhorns against the Dragons. The Longhorns grabbed 51 rebounds and scored 44 points in the paint, overwhelming the Colonial Athletic Association tournament champions inside. Texas had 26 offensive rebounds with Gaston collecting a game-high eight. She played 17 minutes.
Freshman point guard Madison Booker said Gaston, “showed a lot of heart,” to shrug off the illness and play.
“To feel that way and still play with us, it shows us a commitment we all have to our end goal,” she said. “It shows character.”