Throughout her life, DaiJa Turner has embodied the mentality of a champion.
At around seven years old, Turner and her dad, Cedric Turner Sr., were talking about a women’s basketball game playing on TV. At one point, Turner Sr. mentioned to his daughter that if she got good grades and continued with the sport, she could play at the collegiate level once she got older.
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“Wait a minute, so you can play basketball in college?” Turner Sr. recalled his daughter asking.
With her new realization, Turner set her sights on eventually becoming a college basketball player. Since then, she has forged a unique path to achieve her record-setting career.
In high school, the now-6-foot-3 forward’s statistics were so gaudy that they seemed impossible. As a junior at Village Christian Academy in Fayetteville, N.C., Turner earned the nickname “Triple-Double DaiJa,” putting up 17.8 points, 21.6 rebounds and a nation-leading 11.8 blocks per game during the 2019-2020 season. The next year, she topped the national leaderboard in both boards and swats, averaging 16.4 points, 22.6 rebounds and 9.8 blocks per contest.
Turner garnered several college offers during her historic run at Village Christian, but she ultimately chose TCU to be part of a competitive Big 12 basketball program. Her first two seasons consisted of scarce playing time and major teamwide struggles, but the Horned Frogs battled adversity, and their efforts finally culminated in a Big 12 Championship and Elite Eight appearance last year.
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After finding success during her four seasons at TCU, Turner carries a high-level pedigree to Evanston.
“When you’re that deep in the NCAA Tournament, you bring a certain work ethic, a certain mentality,” Wildcat head coach Joe McKeown said at Big Ten Media Day in October. “To have people like her who understand what it’s like to play deep into March, that really helps your locker room.”
With limited playing time in 2024-25, Turner has largely flown under the radar. Although Northwestern’s coaching staff intends to give her a big boost in minutes, the full scope of her impact on the floor for the ‘Cats remains uncertain.
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Regardless, Turner and the people around her know her winning mindset is unshakeable.
Turner’s passion for basketball began at around three years old. She would watch games on the sidelines, itching to participate despite not yet meeting the six-year-old age requirement.
That persistence eventually paid off. Turner played the game while growing up in Fayetteville, learning the importance of hard work from her older brother, Cedric Jr. A military kid, she and her family moved to South Korea in 2012 after her dad had to relocate.
Despite the initial learning curve of playing overseas, Turner’s basketball dominance didn’t take long to develop. In 2013, shortly after her 10th birthday, she joined a 10-12-year-old co-ed rec league. Even then, she was already taller than a lot of the kids on the court.
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Turner Sr. said his daughter’s presence caused quite a stir among the parents watching the game.
“One of the parents was saying, ‘Man, they got that big ol’ girl out there, she looks like she’s about 13 years old,’” Turner Sr. said. “She’s dominating. The score at halftime is 30-2. DaiJa has 28 points of the 30 points, and the lady’s like, ‘They need to be ashamed of themselves.’”
Suffice to say, Turner only played one half of basketball in the 10-12 age group. She moved up to the 13-15 league afterward, continuing to play above her age range and on boys’ teams to develop faster.
Eventually, Turner Sr. became a volunteer JV boys’ coach at Daegu High School. When Turner was in eighth grade, her dad initially asked to get her on the girls’ high school team early during a coaches’ meeting, but the superintendent told him it was against their policy.
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As it happened, Turner also stopped by the meeting to ask her father for store money. After seeing Turner, who was about six feet tall at the time, the superintendent’s tune quickly changed.
“‘Wait a minute, wait a minute. We need to see if we can get these rules changed,’” Turner Sr. recalled the superintendent saying. “I said, ‘It’s okay. She’ll play on the middle school team.’”
The superintendent tried to insist. Nonetheless, not wanting his daughter to receive special treatment, Turner Sr. ultimately decided against his original idea.
When Turner entered ninth grade, her dad switched to coaching the girls’ varsity team, which previously had not won a game in the Korean-American Interscholastic Activities Conference in three seasons. For two years, she dominated, quickly becoming one of the league’s top rebounders and defenders and guiding her team to a combined 23-9 record across both campaigns.
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In 2019, Turner and her family returned to Fayetteville, where she would attend Village Christian Academy. By this point, her reputation had begun to grow. Buzz was spreading around the school, but perhaps no one anticipated her arrival more than then-girls’ basketball head coach Kelvin Mills.
Coach Mills knew the scouting report on Turner and her elite upside. He learned about her basketball skills from Dorian Williams, an AAU coach in Atlanta with some insight on international players.
“I made a beeline,” Mills said with laughter. “She came in with high expectations, and she actually lived up to each and every one of them.”
Upon her arrival, Turner began her ascension to historic dominance. She immediately earned her “Triple-Double DaiJa” nickname, dominating on both sides of the ball and earning a 27-16 combined record in her two seasons with the Knights.
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“I think one of my teachers actually gave me that nickname, and then it just went everywhere in all the newspapers,” Turner said. “I was proud that what I learned in Korea translated here.”
Mills remembers Turner’s historic performances quite well. He recalls one game where she had a block on four or five consecutive trips down the floor.
But for Mills, the memories that stand out most relate to Turner’s character, both on and off the basketball court.
“Muhammad Ali once said that the debt we pay for our time on this earth is service to others. That’s always first with DaiJa, and I didn’t have to teach her that, but I admired her in that capacity.”
Kelvin Mills, former girls’ basketball head coach at Village Christian Academy
Sometimes, Mills would take Turner out amid blowout victories, both to protect her from injury and to prevent his team from running up the score. Scorekeepers would tell him that she only needed “one more rebound” or “one more block” for a triple- or even quadruple-double (the latter of which she once had, putting up 17 points, 24 rebounds, 14 blocks and 10 steals in a Jan. 17, 2020 loss).
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Turner wasn’t focused on the numbers. She always wanted to play, but she also wanted to put the team and her coach first.
“DaiJa would never, ever come to me and ask to go back in, because she understood,” Mills said. “I would look at her, and she would just smile, but she would never say, ‘Put me in.’”
After losses, Turner’s commitment to her craft only intensified. She was her own harshest critic, always taking the blame for a close defeat, even when she had what most observers would consider a great game. If she missed free throws or struggled in the low post, she’d ask Mills to open up the gym early the next morning so she could work to get better.
In addition to starring in basketball, Turner was also a standout student. When her fellow players needed help with AP Calculus or AP Physics classes, she was always there to assist before practice began.
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“She would say, ‘Let me go in there and help tutor and get them through this,’” Mills said. “And then after practice was over, if there was nobody following us like the boys or something, DaiJa would stay and work on her game with her father or me or by herself or get on the shooting machine.”
Both Turner and her father were committed to helping other players who needed it. Mills recalls how the pair would go out and get shoes for players who couldn’t afford them. At annual Christmas party gift exchanges, they’d bring extra presents for those who might not otherwise participate.
“Muhammad Ali once said that the debt we pay for our time on this earth is service to others,” Mills said. “That’s always first with DaiJa, and I didn’t have to teach her that, but I admired her in that capacity.”
On the court, Turner played unselfishly, putting her teammates in positions to succeed. She’d often pass up layup opportunities to kick the ball back out to her teammates and facilitate buckets.
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“I’d be like, ‘You’ve got a layup!’” Mills said. “She said, ‘Nope, I want her to score, it’s her birthday. I want her to score, she broke up with her boyfriend today. She needs to score. She needs something positive in her life right now.’”
Over the years, Mills has learned a lot about how to coach tall players like Turner by homing in on their fundamentals. While instructing at a Pat Summitt elite camp in the 2000s, he recalls being told by the legendary Summitt herself to mentor a 12- or 13-year-old girl — already over six feet tall — who was clumsy, had big feet and struggled with footwork.
The girl’s name was Brittney Griner.
“When a young lady walks in your gym with height, you do everything you can to develop it,” Mills said. “And I never forgot that.”
Unsurprisingly, Turner received heavy interest from several schools before her college decision.
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Turner’s ability as a scorer, rebounder and shot-blocker brought waves of phone calls to Mills, who estimates fielding about 10 to 12 a day. Many schools offered Turner the chance to play right away as a first-year. Instead of taking any of those opportunities, she chose TCU, seeking to maximize the level of competition she would face in practices.
Of course, that tradeoff included a significant reduction in playing time.
A lack of minutes represented a new challenge for Turner, who had essentially always been the centerpiece of her teams up to that point. In today’s landscape, many college basketball players might transfer immediately to avoid dealing with that sort of obstacle for four years. But Turner was unfazed.
“A lot of kids in other places would have cried and complained about not getting playing time,” Turner Sr. said. “But she was loyal to a fault, as you say, because when she’s committed to something, she’s going to stick with it.”
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Turner redshirted for her 2021-22 season and played just 22 minutes the next year. In 2023-24, her time on the floor began to increase, and she even started three contests, averaging 11.5 minutes per game in 18 appearances.
Then, disaster struck.
Turner suffered an ankle injury in January of that season. She initially tried to play through it, but her efforts were in vain, and she announced on Jan. 17, 2024 that she had undergone season-ending surgery. The Horned Frogs, who were already dealing with a slew of injuries, were forced to forfeit two Big 12 games due to the extraordinary circumstance of simply not having enough available athletes.
For Turner, the rehab process was a major challenge.
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“It was really long,” Turner said. “Ankle injuries are pretty tough. My process took about six to seven months. Just learning how to literally walk again and run again was the toughest part.”
It was frustrating for Turner to have to overthink the physical movements that were natural to her before her surgery. The silver lining of her situation was getting to watch games from the sideline, which she said helped her gain a deeper understanding of what her coaches talked about during practice.
Still, her return to action was far from smooth. During her redshirt junior season, Turner largely fell out of a revamped TCU rotation led almost exclusively by four guards and 6-foot-7 center Sedona Prince. She only accumulated 17 total minutes during TCU’s 2024-25 NCAA Tournament campaign, with just three of those coming in conference play.
“It was tough at first, but I think I learned a lot,” Turner said. “And I’m glad I got to learn, especially from that group of players, obviously like Sedona, Hailey (Van Lith), Maddie (Conner), a lot of really good players. I got to play alongside them and learn from them, so I think that helped me out a lot, especially with my game.”
During the transfer portal process last spring, Northwestern quickly caught Turner’s eye. Following the 2024-25 campaign, she visited campus and formed a connection with the coaches, particularly associate head coach Tangela Smith, who focuses on development and works heavily with Wildcat post players.
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On the visit, Smith compared Turner to successful Northwestern bigs of the past, including Courtney Shaw, Paige Mott and even NU single-season rebound record holder Pallas Kunaiyi-Akpanah. During film study, the pair made a connection, and Turner eventually decided to take her talents to Evanston.
“We need her both on the offensive end and the defensive end. So she’ll be in that rotation for sure.”
Tangela Smith on DaiJa Turner
“I had a lot of different offers, but I think the coaching staff here at Northwestern on my visit was really the reason why I came here,” Turner said.
Mills recalls that Virginia and East Carolina were two of several other schools in pursuit. In the midst of Turner’s deliberations, Turner Sr. called Mills to ask what he thought about Turner going to Northwestern.
The former Village Christian head coach was thrilled.
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“I said, ‘Northwestern, there’s just no doubt,’” Mills said, laughing. “I always tell her, I say, ‘Listen, basketball will get a lot of things out of you. But the one thing that I want you to get out of basketball is your degree. You have your bachelor’s. I want you to finish your master’s because then, and only then, can you maximize your life.’”
In Evanston, Turner continues to pursue that goal, working to earn her graduate degree in Sports Administration. She’s earned praise from her teammates and coaches, seeking to bring her postseason mindset from Fort Worth, Texas, to Evanston.
“It is so cool to have someone like DaiJa on the team now, especially coming from TCU and that success of a program,” senior Wildcat forward Grace Sullivan said at Big Ten Media Day. “It’s just been super awesome to just see how she operates on the court and in the locker room.”
“We’re excited about DaiJa,” McKeown said that same afternoon. “DaiJa is 6-4, can run the floor, block shots. We’ll get her on the court.”
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Smith praises Turner’s athleticism, along with her ability to rebound, play defense and run the floor. To begin the year, she expects the coaches to rotate primarily between Turner, Sullivan and sophomore forward Tayla Thomas in the post, with Turner garnering “at least 20 to 25 minutes” per contest.
“We need her both on the offensive end and the defensive end,” Smith said. “So she’ll be in that rotation for sure.”
Turner saw 16 minutes of action last Saturday in Northwestern’s 82-49 exhibition victory over Lewis, scoring one point and grabbing eight rebounds, including four on the offensive glass. Smith said Turner — despite being “a little bit limited” — also had eight rebounds in just nine minutes of action in the Wildcats’ opening scrimmage against Chicago State.
There’s a lot that the coaching staff likes about Turner entering the season. But given Smith’s focus on development, she’s seeking to find areas in which Turner can improve. Chief among those are scoring on the perimeter and being comfortable driving to the basket.
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“She can shoot the three, but I’m thinking she’s more mid-range,” Smith said. “I don’t want people to sag off of her.”
When describing her own strengths as a player, Turner talks heavily about leadership.
“You can’t make up experiences, you kind of have to go through them,” Turner said. “So I think from freshman year to now, I have a lot of wisdom to show everybody.”
As she prepares to begin her tenure with Northwestern, Turner knows there’s plenty of room for the Wildcats to improve. The ‘Cats hold a combined 8-46 conference record over the past three seasons, but that’s nothing new to Turner: In her first two seasons at TCU, the Horned Frogs put up an even lower winning percentage, finishing 3-33 in Big 12 contests before turning things around in 2024-25.
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After last season’s Elite Eight run with TCU, Turner understands that progress can be facilitated right away. She and her teammates have had a lot of talks, setting goals and standards and seeking to shift the mindset away from that of a losing record.
“It can be done,” Turner said. “You don’t need years to shift a program. … Accountability is really the main part.”
Smith is already seeing positive signs. After not having the season they wanted last year, she said the players have a “whole different mindset,” working even harder in the gym to avoid a repeat of 2024-25.
In McKeown’s final season as the Wildcats’ head coach, Smith expects the players to have extra motivation as they seek to wrap up his career on a positive note.
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“They love him,” Smith said. “They want him to go out with a bang.”
For Turner and the other graduating seniors, they’ll be having their one, final ride alongside NU’s beloved head coach, soaking in their last season of memories before their college basketball careers close. The Big Ten looks as tough as ever in 2025-26, and the Wildcats will need to make significant improvements to contend with top opponents. But as McKeown alluded to at Media Day, a fresh face with the experience of a winner can change a lot for a locker room.
Success is never simple or easy. But as Turner and everyone around her knows, a winning mix of humility and confidence can absolutely go a long way.
