She didn’t ride it.
The point guard carried it.
It was a blue and yellow toy bus — “like you’d get for a toddler,” is how UD coach Tamika Williams-Jeter later explained it — but it had been turned into a learning tool for the grown-up world.
“It’s a metaphor,” quipped director of athletics communication Ross Bagienski as he heard my questions while walking past.
Stephens nodded: “Yes, a metaphor.”
It was linked to the positive energy and overcoming negativity traits that business ventures and sports teams can draw from “The Energy Bus,” a book by Jon Gordon.
Over the summer, Williams-Jeter and her staff used the book — which was read and discussed by the team — as a teaching tool.
To better draw on those lessons throughout the season, assistant coach Kalisha Keane got the toy and transformed it with decals bearing various positivity phrases.
After every game, a player, coach or staff member is awarded the bus by the person in possession of it from the game before.
On this night — and rightly so — guard Maliyah Johnson presented it to Stephens, who, arguably, had the best game in her two years at UD after first graduating from Columbia University.
She certainly was not the reason the 9-8 Flyers lost to 15-4 Richmond.
Although the smallest Flyer on the court, she carried the team all night.
She made eight of 11 field goal attempts — she connected on two of three 3-point attempts when the rest of the team went two-for-14 from long range – and didn’t have a turnover although she played a team-high 34 minutes, 56 seconds.
Just 5-foot-6 ½ and slightly built, she found — after watching tape and studying Richmond’s tendencies — the creases and openings she could capitalize on against a Spiders team that had four starters who were six feet or taller and subbed in five more players that size.
Her successful scouting mission gave hint of her future.
Although she has an Ivy League sociology degree and now is working on a master’s in education at UD, she said she plans to be a coach and wants it to be at the college or WNBA level.
Williams-Jeter was a college star at UConn, where she remains the all-time leader in field goal percentage (74.3 percent), scored 1,402 points, was the 10th best rebounder of all-time and helped win two national titles.
A first round pick of the Minnesota Lynx, she played seven seasons in the WNBA before becoming a college coach.
With such a prodigious resume and an ability to smile, embrace and connect, Williams-Jeter has been the perfect resource for Stephens to tap into to reach her coaching dream.
“Coach Meek is helping me a lot, just giving me advice and making connections for me,” Stephens said.
Thanks to Williams-Jeter, who hooked her up with the last team she played for, Stephens spent a summer internship with the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun.
At this year’s Final Four, Stephens will be part of the special developmental program called “So You Want To Be A Coach.”
Although she said she’d “love” to keep playing beyond college, Stephens — who has missed most of one season and part of another with ankle injuries — admitted: “My body is running on empty right now.”
So, in this, her final season as a college player, she said: “I like to think of myself as a coach on the floor.
“Coach Meek and I are always on the same page, and she gives me free will to sometimes call out action that I’m seeing. Basically, I’m just trying to bring whatever is needed to my team.”
Stephens said that’s why Johnson awarded her the energy bus Wednesday night:
“She basically said that with me being a point guard, a lot of things go unnoticed: Like the pressure I have on my back just to show up every day for my team and make everybody around me better.”
‘She’s going to make a great coach’
“I’ve known her since she was a kid,” Williams-Jeter said of Stephens. “And my husband trained her (with his AAU team).
“When I was at Penn State I recruited her. The only reason we couldn’t take her was that she was so little. She won’t tell you, but back then she was barely 100 pounds.
“But oh, she was just so good.”
Stephens led Pickerington Central High to two state championship games and one state crown.
Recruited by several schools — including four from the Ivy League — she chose Columbia though she said with a smile: “My mom was pretty nervous about me living in New York City.”
She ended up loving it so much that it’s where she wants to live and coach one day.
Her first season at Columbia — 2020-21 — all Ivy League basketball was canceled. She returned home and helped coach her high school team.
“When I’d played there, my coaches would say, ‘One day you’ll make a great coach,’” Stephens said.
“And I’d always say, ‘No, that’s NOT what I want to do.’”
But she enjoyed the time with her old high school team and then her junior year at Columbia, she suffered an ankle injury seven games into the season that required surgery.
As a medical redshirt, she spent her season scouting the opponents.
After playing 61 games at Columbia — all but one coming off the bench — she got her degree and said Ivy League rules didn’t allow graduates to play for teams in the league.
When she entered the transfer portal, she drew considerable interest, but none more so than that of Williams-Jeter.
To date, Stephens has played 46 games for the Flyers, started 40 and this season she’s UD’s second-leading scorer (9.4 ppg), the team assist leader and is third in steals.
“She’s a great captain and a great leader who puts people in place to be successful;” Willams-Jeter said. “And I’ll tell you now, she’s going to make a great coach.”
‘Where do you want to go?’
Stephens said what she especially likes about coaching is seeing young players find their way and understand the game:
“I like seeing them take the next steps.”
She experienced that as a Columbia senior when she helped freshmen on the team and she’s seeing it now with the Flyers and young players like freshman MG Talle, who was born in Cameroon and grew up in Quebec.
Talle missed the summer session because she had to finish course work for college. Then a lingering, untreated injury, she said, from high school turned into something more serious in the fall here and required surgery.
She missed the Flyers first seven games and finally made her debut against George Washington in early December and scored 10 points.
Wednesday night was her best game to date.
In 19 ½ minutes off the bench, she scored nine points, grabbed nine rebounds, had two steals and handled the task of guarding the reigning Atlantic 10 Player of the Year, Maggie Doogan, who leads the league in scoring (24.6 points per game) and just had 48 points against Davidson four days earlier.
“She didn’t back down from the challenge,” Williams-Jeter said. “She wanted every bit of guarding and defending against her.”
Doogan made four of 10 shots, missed all four of her three-point attempts and finished with 13 points.
Talle said an older player, like Stephens, is a great example for her.
That was especially the case Wednesday night and it’s why Stephens was given the little bus.
She would take it home with her and then bring it to practices at the Cronin Center and along on the trip to Saint Louis for Sunday’s game with the Billikens.
Since the bus began as a toy, she was asked what cool things it could do to catch a toddler’s interest.
She pressed a button and the horn blew.
“I know it plays music and talks to you too,” she said.
With another button press, a cutesy voice asked:
“Where do you want to go?”
Toy or metaphor, it was time to go home.
Clutching her game shoes in one hand, the bus in the other, Stephens headed for the Arena door.
Her basketball body may be nearly empty, but her future seemed full.
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