SAN ANTONIO – Two defining moments have made Maya Linton the basketball player that she is today.
The first took place during the summer before her senior year of high school. It was a time in her life that UTSA’s junior guard from Duncanville, Texas, will never forget.
“All we did was defensive drills, defensive drills, defensive drills,” Linton said. “It put it in my mind that you’ve got to be a dog on defense. I just had fun with it – all the nitty gritty. That’s where I got it from.”
Linton came from a storied girls basketball program at Duncanville High School, which has won 12 state titles in its illustrious history. She was familiar with Pantherette greats Tiffany Jackson, Empress Davenport and Ariel Atkins, all of whom played for UTSA head coach Karen Aston at the University of Texas. Atkins, who was the seventh overall pick in the 2018 WNBA Draft, has been a five-time WNBA All-Defensive Team member with the Washington Mystics. It was part of what drew Linton to UTSA.
“I always heard that [Aston] loves the dogs,” Linton said. “You have to do all the dirty work and be able to run through a brick wall. If that’s my role on the team, I’m going to do it to the best of my ability.”
As a high school player, Linton possessed all of the intangible qualities that Aston looks for in prospective student-athletes.
“I look for players that have a high motor, I’m not necessarily looking for the most skilled players in the world,” Aston said. “I think we have great coaches who are more than willing to get in the gym with players and help them improve in the areas they need to, but you can’t teach motor. You can’t teach competitive spirit. And you can’t teach a winning attitude. Maya has the tools. She’s really putting a lot of time in, but I think she’s also embracing what her special gifts are.”
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Growing up in Fort Worth, Texas, Linton first hit the hardwood in third grade, but there was another sport that had her heart even before she started kindergarten.
“My first love was football,” Linton said. “I played football when I was little – flag football and tackle football. That’s probably why I’m so aggressive, because I really got it from football.”
She played football through the fourth grade, but Linton was also game for any sport that came her way, including volleyball and track & field. There was a common theme that crossed all of the sports she played in her youth.
“Just being coachable,” Linton said. “I’ve been through all of these sports and there are different techniques. The whole time, the thing you have to be is coachable and you have to be motivated.”
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The second defining moment in Linton’s basketball career came this past fall and it was a result of that willingness to be coachable.
Linton approached Jamie Carey, UTSA’s associate head coach who was the starting point guard on Texas’ 2003 NCAA Final Four team and played four seasons in the WNBA, asking for help to become a better player.
“I came up to her one day and I was like, ‘Coach, you’ve got to make me into a guard.’”
Carey agreed to put in extra work with Linton, but insisted on a strong commitment from her pupil.
“I said, ‘Yeah, we can work out. But here’s the deal – it’s every day,” Carey said. “I told her, ‘It’s time to get committed to being a guard. You can’t do it every once and a while.’”
Since that time, Carey has put Linton through a one-on-one workout nearly every day at 7:15 a.m.
“She gets up in the morning and works,” Carey said. “Our relationship has grown a ton this year. I think any time you show up for each other at 7 o’clock in the morning, whether it’s been good or bad, you learn a lot about each other. We’ve grown to trust each other and share a little bit more about our lives. To be honest, that’s why I coach - to form relationships like that. I’m really proud of her and the progress that she’s made.”
Linton’s growth can be matched only by her unselfishness. She’s often tasked with guarding the opposing team’s best player and charged with focusing primarily on defense. They’re assignments that, even when executed well, don’t often appear on Linton’s individual stat line.
“I take it personally that Coach trusts me to guard this person,” she said. “It’s my job to stop them from scoring. Coach thinks I can do this and I’m going to do it.”
And while the numbers may not show up next to Linton’s name, Carey believes there are numerous ways that Linton’s stifling defensive presence contributes to UTSA’s collective success.
“What Maya does is that she impacts the entire stat sheet,” Carey said. “She does a lot of gritty work that you have to have somebody on your team who is willing to do that. She’s a ball magnet with the amount of plays she impacts, the amount of deflections she has and the number of times she gets her hands on the basketball. Those are game-changing plays. I think those hustle plays that she has given us are really, really critical in combination with the other skill sets that we have on the floor.”
Just how important is it for the Roadrunners to have a player like Linton?
“I think every team you look at from a championship perspective, there is one,” Carey said. “There’s somebody who is okay if they don’t score 20 points, but they shut down the other team’s best player, they’re physical and gritty, and they’re willing to make plays on the ground.”
Carey points to Bruce Bowen’s role on three NBA Championship teams for the San Antonio Spurs and her former teammates Tai Dillard and Annissa Hastings on Texas’ 2003 Big 12 Conference Championship team as examples of the importance of Linton’s contributions.
“That’s what Maya has committed to and it’s changed her game,” Carey said.
Linton’s teammates have taken notice of her evolution since last season.
“Maya has been the pesky, up-in-your-grill defender since she was a freshman, but she’s grown so much this past year,” said Jordyn Jenkins, an early favorite for the American Athletic Conference Player of the Year accolade. “To be a starter and to be guarding the best player on the opposing team, we knew she was a defender, but it goes unnoticed sometimes. I’m grateful for Maya.”
In many ways, Linton’s penchant for defense is a throwback to an earlier era of basketball, but it also gives the Roadrunners an edge against their opponents.
“It’s hard to find nowadays because everybody looks at social media and who scored the most points,” Aston said. “But I don’t think you can have a successful team for the long haul and have a chance to do special things if you don’t have one or two players who are willing to give up their focus offensively to focus on a defensive game plan and embrace themselves as a defensive stopper. I can think of championship teams I’ve been a part of and every one of them had someone who was like, ‘give me whoever they’ve got.’”
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Faith plays a central role in Linton’s life. To find peace within her busy schedule as a student-athlete, Linton regularly reads the Bible, along with a wide variety of other books, just before bedtime to quiet her mind.
Her decision to come to UTSA also involved a leap of faith. At the time, the Roadrunners had not had much recent success in women’s basketball and won seven games in Aston’s first season as head coach. Linton believed in Aston’s vision for the future and was eager to be a part of it.
“It was definitely the coaches,” Linton said. “Right when I met them all, even talking to them on the phone, I could just tell that they’re really bought in, they know what I can do and they believe in me. I knew they could help me throughout the process of my four years here. With them, I could see that I could get better and better. It was just how they spoke about it.”
Since arriving in the fall of 2022, Linton has been an important part of the ascent of the UTSA women’s basketball program. The building process is something she has found particularly fulfilling.
“It’s such a blessing, especially for the juniors here, because we’ve been able to see it all get built from the ground up,” she said. “To be able to be a part of that, especially with an amazing group of coaches and girls, it’s unbeatable for sure.”
Despite last season’s 18 wins, which included a trip to the Women’s National Invitation Tournament and the first postseason victory in school history, Linton and the Roadrunners finished the year unfulfilled. UTSA let a game against East Carolina in the semifinals of the American Athletic Conference Tournament slip away and the 55-54 loss prevented the Roadrunners from having an opportunity to play for the league tournament title and advance to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2009.
“We can still feel the loss last year; it just hurt,” Linton said. “We never want to feel that again. I think that drives our hunger to win and to want to make it to the NCAA Tournament. Yes, we did postseason, but we’ve already been there, so now we’re trying to get even further.”
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The energy that Linton brings to all aspects of her life is contagious, but also antithetical depending on the setting. It’s practically impossible to spend any time with Linton away from the court and not see her flash her trademark smile. It’s equally difficult to spot a moment on the court when she’s not serious about the task at hand.
“I would say I’ve always been a positive person off the court,” Linton said. “It’s kind of funny because people are like, you don’t seem like you play like that. Off the court, I try to be a positive, great teammate and a good person. On the court, it’s game time; you’ve got to be a dog.”
Just as Linton is able to compartmentalize her game and not worry about contributing to an offensive highlight feed, so too is she able to focus on being a model teammate in those times when she’s not playing her best.
“Even if you’re not having a good game, you have to be positive and you have to be cheering,” Linton said. “It’s so important to lift other people up so they can step up and have the game that you’re not having. I think that’s something you always need to remember. It’s not about you; it’s a team sport. Even if you’re not doing something on the court, you can always do something positive off the court with your attitude.”
Linton’s passion for lifting others up will translate well into her future career plans. She’s a psychology major in UTSA’s College for Health, Community and Policy, and aspires to one day work with kids in some capacity.
“I have two nieces and a nephew and, ever since they were born, I just fell in love with them,” Linton said. “I’ve always wanted to work with kids.”
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There’s a different feel to this year’s UTSA women’s basketball team and it’s palpable. Linton sums it up in one word – poised.
“This year’s team, especially when we get in crunch time, we just think ‘stay poised, stay poised,’” she said. “In previous years, we would have sped up or freaked out. This year, we’ve got it. We’re comfortable with each other on the court, off the court and we know each other’s tendencies. We know if you’re there, I’m here. We’re just comfortable and it’s helped us win a lot of games for sure.”
Linton’s poise shined through particularly bright in the team’s win at Tulsa on Jan. 4. Her assignment that day was to guard Delanie Crawford, who entered the game as The American’s leading scorer at 19 points per game. The Roadrunners led by just three points with 4:04 remaining. Linton’s defensive prowess was on full display, holding Crawford to just 10 points, and helping UTSA earn the win.
“I thought she was the difference in the game, no question about it,” Aston said. “Delanie is a wonderfully gifted offensive basketball player and Maya committed to not being concerned about anything other than making it difficult to get her shots off. It was a collective effort, but I think Maya set the tone for us defensively.”
Rather than be overwhelmed by the task of guarding one of the league’s best offensive players, Linton welcomed the challenge.
“Before the game, Coach told me, ‘Your job today is shut down,’” Linton said. “I was like, okay, I’ve got you. It’s a mindset. If my shots aren’t falling, it can’t affect me on the defensive end and that helped my performance for sure. That was my job for the game.”
Early in her collegiate career, Linton was a player who had the tendency to overthink. She was hard on herself, Aston said, and, at times, expected things to come to her too fast. This season, Linton has been able to live in the moment.
“It’s one play at a time and you move on to the next play,” she said. “You mess up? Okay, erase it, next play. It doesn’t matter. Personally, that’s what has helped me so much. If you want to win the game, you’re going to make mistakes, you just have to move on from it. More importantly, it’s about living in the moment, going play to play and having fun.”
Through 16 games this season, Linton and the Roadrunners have been having a lot of fun. They’re 14-2 overall and sit atop the AAC standings with a 5-0 league mark. But they also know this is just the beginning.
“We are nowhere close to hitting our potential,” Linton said. “We’re not even scratching the surface yet.”