Out-team, out-tough, out-together. It’s been the motto Zakiyah Franklin has been playing with since she joined the women’s basketball program at the University of Kansas. Now, in her last few months of being a senior and with an uncertain amount of time on the court in front of her, it’s become both a tangible approach to attacking the games she has left and a fair summary of the lasting legacy she’ll leave on the program when she graduates.
“We stand by that, those three things,” Franklin says over the phone from the Jayhawks coaching offices, her voice as steady as ever.
The Kansas women’s team did not get to where it first aimed when the season got underway. Coming off an appearance in the 2022 NCAA Tournament that snapped a nine year drought, a second consecutive postseason berth was the goal for Franklin, as well as seniors Holly Kersgieter and Taiyanna Jackson. With Jackson’s defensive prowess, Kersgieter’s shooting, and Franklin’s steady playmaking all combining to create a purposeful style of play, the team found itself firmly on the Bubble entering the stretch run of the year. But in a heartbreaking turn in the Big 12 Championship, KU fell in the final seconds to TCU, and two days later it was announced the Jayhawks were one of the first four out of the Tournament.
After months of steady propulsion with the three seniors’ eyes fixed on the same goal, it appeared their season was over — with it, the three of them playing their pragmatic brand of basketball together, at least in the small city of Lawrence, again.
“I was so bad, like, I would airball a layup” Jackson laughs, remembering herself as a lanky, uncoordinated kid with plenty of bounce but no game. “My granny told me, stick with it.”
From a young age Jackson, along with her twin sister Tiara, were encouraged to play basketball by family and teachers.
“I used to be uncomfortable in middle school cause I was just so tall and I felt like, oh my god, everybody is so tiny,” Jackson recalls. Even with early coaches and her parents telling her to be patient, that she’d grow into things, she didn’t always agree. “I didn’t wanna feel like I was forced to play because my height, I wanted to play because I liked the game,” she says.
Begrudgingly, Jackson started playing AAU basketball and found that with the travel, variety in teammates, and who she was going up against, she was able to fall into a rhythm. She found the tempo of games and practice good for her head. After going the junior college route for two years, Jackson was approached by the Kansas women’s program, joining the team ahead of their 2022 season. In her junior year, Jackson was the first player in program history to be named to the Big 12 All-Defensive team, ranked fourth in the nation in blocks, and shot 61.4 percent from the field. In a group that had largely been together since their freshman years, she fit in so well that Kersgieter likened her presence around the rim to a “security blanket.”
“The people here make me feel at home, make me feel like a family,” Jackson says over the phone, her bright and assured voice growing quiet, “it’s not just about basketball.”
Kersgieter’s praise was doubly meaningful considering what she and Franklin walked into when arriving in Lawrence, and how they’ve both shaped and shouldered the program since. Kersgieter and Franklin joined the Jayhawks after the team spent the years since their last Tournament berth consistently towards the bottom of the Big 12. Both had, in conversations with head coach Brandon Schneider and one another, agreed that turning the women’s program around was a big ask, but a worthwhile one. Their freshman year was cut abruptly short by COVID, and their sophomore year was one of incremental growth that ended without an invitation to the NCAA Tournament or the WNIT.
For Kersgieter, who grew up in Tulsa watching Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant lead the Thunder as close as they’ve ever been to a title, cumulative growth made sense. It was also fun — at least that’s how Durant, who she counts as her favorite basketball player, made it look. Much like Durant, Kersgieter tends to keep a cool, almost distant approach to in-game action, as if she’s moving around on a plane slightly adjacent to a sequence’s roil and tangle. For how fluidly and deftly she picks he shots, it’s hard to believe that in her freshman year, worried about doing too much, she resisted shooting to the point where Schneider bluntly told her she had to do more. She attributes her level-headedness to her older brother — who she grew up playing alongside and who didn’t go easy on her — and to her AAU coach, Brian Morgan.
“One moment he would kind of obliterate you and put you on the spot and call you out. But then the next moment he was your biggest fan and he was the first person to help you take that next step. And at the end of the day, I kind of just took from that, that brutal honesty is very helpful,” Kersgieter laughs, “especially in sports.”
It’s been that kind of honesty that Kersgieter credits as the foundation of the relationship she shares with Franklin.
“She doesn’t let stuff get to her and even if it does, she doesn’t show it,” Kersgieter says. “I really observed her in that way over the last few years. As people, we’ve learned each other, we just know each other really well. Neither of us celebrate that big, neither of us are super loud people off the court. So after that it’s just kind of letting each other be each other, on and off the court, and just accepting that, and being there for each other.”
On the floor, that’s translated to the two seniors being able to intuitively know where the other person is during plays, but also the both of them recognizing when to step up as leaders. Kersgieter notes she and Franklin looked for opportunities, more this year than ever, to communicate to their team when it was necessary. “Especially the little things, like in huddles, or in little moments of the game where maybe not everyone notices, but it’s things that we notice and we need to step up and say something,” she says.
“I think we’ve been a balance,” Kersgieter adds, mentioning with a chuckle that in-game she’ll be the one to yell if yelling is needed. “I try and get her to express somewhat emotions from a leader standpoint and just trying to get people’s attention. And then she’s kind of on the opposite for me, like teaching me how to be a calm, quiet leader.”
Like Kersgieter, Franklin is faster to speak about her teammates than she is of herself, which is the quality of a calm, quiet leader as much as it is an athlete who’s spent the last four years watching everyone around her on the floor to figure out what’s working, what isn’t, and how to fix it. Franklin’s own development as a Jayhawk has been full of similar adjustments.
“Each year I try to go in with the mindset of working on the things that I need to work on, but also trying to add at least something to my game,” Franklin says. “Whether it was finishing around the rim — obviously I play in the Big 12, so we’ve had a lot of shot blockers — adding a floater, or the next year it might have been a pull-up jump shot, or working on defense, and the next year extending my range to the three-point line when they pushed that back.”
For Franklin, team goals are the same. Pick one thing, place it top of mind, and work at it. Where this year’s main goal for the team did not materialize, in the incremental steps year over year to get here, Franklin, Kersgieter and Jackson have done something bigger. It wouldn’t have been a practical, or even tangible goal, to have when each of them stepped foot on the floor. But as they leave it, they’ll have created and handed off what they’ve crafted with care and effort: a new path for the Kansas women’s basketball program.
It’s hard enough to compete in the crowded world of college sports, it can be harder still when the men’s program on campus is an institution in the sport. Kansas won the men’s NCAA Tournament last year and is regularly one of the top programs in the country, which brings perennial perks like more funding, more fans, and more opportunities for athletes after college. The three seniors leading the women’s team have brought the team to prominence in just four years, the past two with palpable excitement from the KU community, but all are realistic about the work it’s going to continue to take.
“It’s truly a work in progress, but it’s been a work in progress that we’ve definitely improved on,” Kersgieter says. “At the end of the day, women’s sports all around the entire world are still working on this. But I think obviously here with the attention that basketball gets, we saw the possibilities we can have when we are a winning program, when we have this positive culture around us. People wanna be around that. And so we definitely have seen the potential and how far we can go and how much we can build it.”
“We’re getting to that point in the women’s side where we’re starting to see the same fans who were pretty much here from day one and got to see the program grow to where it is now,” Franklin adds, “It’s really become not only just a community, but a family, honestly.”
Of their own, individual legacies and impacts on the program, the answer is tougher. Jackson, with a laugh, flatly says she can’t think about it, not yet. Franklin says while she’s definitely thought about it, and acknowledges the work she and Kersgieter did to turn the program around in a positive way, she still handles it with the day by day approach that she perpetually uses. Kersgieter picks up where Franklin leaves off, and looks at it as something open-ended, still growing.
“I think in the beginning, our freshman and sophomore year we struggled with [it]. We were like, we’re really trying to make a difference, but we’re not quite there yet. But I think that also led into why we are still here. We didn’t quit. We didn’t wanna give up,” Kersgieter says. “We’re not done yet.”
And literally, they aren’t. After the crushing end to their regular season, the team was invited to the Women’s NIT. They’ve since won two in a row, first by taking care of business against Western Kentucky and then, satisfyingly, running longtime rival Missouri out of the gym by 28 points.
“I think they’ve really responded in the right way. They’ve really channeled that disappointment and anger into gratitude for the opportunity to compete,” Coach Schneider said of the Mizzou win.
“The season has definitely flown by, but there are moments where it’s like, okay, this stretch has been here for a minute, so it’s like, is it ever gonna be over?” Franklin reflects, “But that’s the part that you have to enjoy, because obviously moments like this right now, March has gotten here fast, you just gotta enjoy these moments, even the long stretches, and just stay present.”
For a group that’s always blended pragmatic, in-the-moment basketball with their overarching approach to reaching much larger goals, the apparent change in tack is only really that way on the surface. This KU women’s team has always been clear about what it is they want to do: play as much basketball as they can together, as long as they can. This contest isn’t a consolation, it’s just a different road to the same steady ambition.
“Regardless of when we leave this place, I think it’ll be growing and evolving for a long time. Because we were a part of when it wasn’t growing and we wanted to change that. Not just for us, but for people who come after us and for women in general,” Kersgieter says. ”People get tired of being in the shadows and we work just as hard, we do just as much, we do all the right things, so we get to a point where you kind of wanna provide that for yourself and not just see it around you.”