CHAMPAIGN — Illinois coaches call it the “growth mindset,” the key quality that has allowed Destiny Jackson to keep improving as the Illini’s starting point guard in her freshman season.
Jackson is able to take critiques with a level head, learn from them and then move on, a skill set she started developing well before she arrived in Champaign as the state’s top-ranked recruit out of Young.
That ability originated at home with her mom.
Teshunda Crockrell wasn’t a basketball player, but she’s competitive about everything she does and she saw that in her daughter too. She saw the potential, especially on the basketball court, where Jackson, small as she was, started gaining attention in grade school and college offers by the eighth grade.
Crockrell offered praise for good performances but always made sure to note where her daughter could improve. She knew it frustrated Jackson sometimes when she was young, but her daughter eventually began to see the intent behind it.
“Sometimes I was like, ‘Mom, would you just leave me alone for a while?’” Jackson said. “But then there were times I was like, OK, I need that little extra push. Because I know I can give a little bit more. I know the place I want to get to.
“So eventually I got to the point where I knew it was out of love and I knew she just wanted the best for me. And it kind of fueled me to be able to take criticism today. Like I hear it and, ‘OK, OK, cool.’ I can apply it. I can take it.”
Jackson’s mindset has propelled her into a crucial role on a young Illinois team that enters the home stretch of the regular season looking to seal a second straight NCAA Tournament berth. Going into Sunday’s game at Northwestern, the 5-foot-6 guard is averaging nine points, 5.2 assists, 3.9 rebounds and 1.6 steals over 26 starts for the Illini (18-8, 8-7 Big Ten).
Illinois coach Shauna Green told reporters she thought she would have a lot more moments this season in which she uttered, “Oh, freshman point guard.” But she and associate head coach Calamity McEntire said that speaks to the way Jackson is focused on growth in her first year.
“She is someone who never blames other people for her mistakes, and that helps her grow quickly,” McEntire said. “She doesn’t outwardly always show that passion, but she is passionate and really cares about her craft and she loves the game.
“She’s someone who’s just willing to learn all the time, and she loves it. And so it’s just really, really fun.”
Formative experiences
Jackson grew up on the West Side playing basketball with four of her cousins, all around her age, all boys. She played — and was gifted at — other sports, including gymnastics and track, but she gravitated toward basketball because that’s what they played.
“They probably made me cry,” Jackson said. “It probably made me tougher. Because me being a girl, sometimes they barely wanted to guard me — (and) sometimes they would be extra hard on me because I’d be scoring on them.”
Crockrell saw it as a formative experience for her daughter.
“That’s why she’s so physical,” she said. “She can take physicality because she always got knocked down. And then eventually she became better than most of the boys did.”
Jackson started playing in second or third grade, and by fourth grade she was playing AAU ball, first with Illinois Excitement, then Mac Irvin Fire and eventually Example Sports, often playing up a level.
As an invitee to some of the top camps, Jackson began to receive college offers in eighth grade, but Crockrell said they received feedback that she needed to improve her defense to make up for her small stature.
“They would tell her, ‘Once you lock down on defense and show that you can actually play defense, then that’s when you’ll start getting some of the bigger offers,’” Crockrell said. “So she kind of took heed to it. She’s always been a natural competitor, but once somebody told her that, she really locked into that to understand, OK, I’m small. I’ve got a disadvantage, so I have to be good in other areas too.”
Crockrell thought her daughter developed her leadership skills while playing for Chicago Public League power Young. In 2022, while playing with Skylar Jones, who is now at Louisville, Jackson helped Young win the city title as a freshman.
Three years later, while trying to win her fourth straight Public League championship, she turned in the signature performance of a high school career that ended with her being named Illinois’ 2025 Ms. Basketball.
Crockrell and Jackson had just watched the USC-UCLA game in which JuJu Watkins scored 38 points. Before Young’s game against eventual Class 4A state champion Kenwood, Crockrell talked to her daughter about how she would need to have a Watkins-like performance.
It didn’t look great when Jackson woke up with the flu that morning. But she came through to score 42 points with seven rebounds and four assists in Young’s 72-61 win over Kenwood.
“Even when the game started I wasn’t sure, but she’s an athlete and I guess at that point your adrenaline starts running,” Crockrell said. “But I could tell at the end of the game it was just like a sense of relief.”
On the recruiting side, McEntire said everyone knew about Jackson even when she was a young player because of her skill, athleticism, speed and toughness.
When Green and her staff arrived at Illinois in the spring of 2022, Green talked about wanting to retain some of the top talent in the state. With multiple scholarships set to open after the graduation of a deep senior class in 2025, the Illini zeroed in on Jackson as their future point guard and recruited her hard.
Crockrell said she wasn’t sold on Illinois under the previous coaching staff. She questioned the direction of the program. They attended a game with hardly anyone in the crowd. She didn’t think it was a hot spot for the best recruits.
Green and her staff recruited Jackson for a while before Jackson started taking Illinois seriously. But Jackson began to form a relationship with the coaches, and Crockrell felt like they genuinely cared. She also felt a shift in the program, which made the NCAA Tournament twice in Green’s first three seasons.
When Jackson took her official visit to Illinois, she told her mom it felt like home.
McEntire said it was a “really good day” when Jackson — a five-star recruit who was No. 31 nationally in the 247Sports composite rankings — committed in the fall of 2024 over finalists North Carolina, Arizona, Baylor and West Virginia.
McEntire said Jackson’s character — “she’s got a light to her and how she treats people” — made it an even better recruiting feat.
“She’s the total package,” McEntire said. “She works her butt off. She’s an elite player, an elite person and just someone that we truly enjoy having in the program.”
‘Bought into learning’
USC freshman star Jazzy Davidson, the nation’s No. 2 high school recruit last year, didn’t look flustered often against Illinois on Feb. 8 at the State Farm Center. But late in the fourth quarter, Jackson was glued to Davidson, doing her best to pester her just across the half-court line.
Davidson, who is 7 inches taller than Jackson, saw a mismatch, directed her teammates out of the way and drove up the right side of the lane to the basket. But Jackson stuck to her the whole way, swiping the ball away down low as Davidson attempted a layup.
Jackson followed her steal with a full-court layup to cut USC’s lead to six points. The Trojans led by as many as 19 in the fourth quarter, thanks in large part to Davidson’s 27 points against multiple Illinois defenders. But plays like that from Jackson helped the Illini at least make it interesting down the stretch for what Illinois announced as a sellout crowd.
Jackson finished the 70-62 loss with 17 points, eight assists, eight steals and just one turnover, one of her best all-around games of the season. She was shocked to see the steals total after the game but attributed it to wanting to do anything to help the Illini win.
Jackson described herself as a defender as “somebody that makes you uncomfortable, somebody that’s going to make you work for everything you do and someone who has a constant motor.”
McEntire said there was a moment in the fall, after they started to play live in practices more often, that defense clicked for Jackson, an area of her game that translated to college more easily than others. McEntire called Jackson “obnoxious for the offensive player at times on that ball.”
“One hundred percent that comes from me being from Chicago,” Jackson said. “The toughness comes from that. Chicago is a lot of gritty guards, just get in your face. We’re going to try to get the ball from you. We’re going to make everything hard.”
Illinois coaches also have been pleased with the way Jackson takes care of the ball.
Entering this past week, she was one of only two freshmen in the top 25 in Division I in assist-to-turnover ratio. She had 127 assists to 56 turnovers — a 2.27 ratio — to rank No. 22 through Sunday’s games. Vanderbilt freshman Aubrey Galvan was the other, ranked No. 20.
McEntire spent two years at Texas before joining Green’s staff in 2022 and coached Rori Harmon, now a senior for the Longhorns, who through Sunday was second in the nation with a 3.89 assist-to-turnover ratio. McEntire let Jackson know that her top-25 ranking is even higher than Harmon’s was during a freshman season in which Harmon received All-America honorable mention.
Jackson said she’s happy with how her feel for the game has translated.
“Some of the passes I made in high school maybe I thought wouldn’t be able to get made in college, just because of the length and how good the players were,” Jackson said. “But I’m actually still able to facilitate at a high level.”
McEntire said they talk weekly, if not every other day, about the stat, and the coach so drilled it into Jackson’s mindset that the first time she committed more than one or two turnovers in a game, she was really bothered by it. McEntire thinks Jackson has a “deep care” for not turning it over.
Jackson also continues to hone her decision making and reads and improve in the art of making a good pass.
“Can you keep that thing on a string and get it right to the pocket, so whenever it hits a shooter’s hands, it’s placed and going up? Because they’ve got to make it for it to be an assist, right?” McEntire said. “It’s positioning your teammates to actually get the score.
“Her handle is really good, that helps her. Her speed is really good, that helps her. She has learned to pass with both hands, that helps her. Learning when to pass underneath and over the defense. She’s learning so many things in so many different areas.
“And it’s just been fun to watch her grow. And now when we’re watching film, we’re like, ‘All right, what did we have right here?’ ‘Yeah, I see that.’ … She has bought into learning as fast as she can and understands that there’s more to come.”
Not everything came as quickly for Jackson.
When she arrived at Illinois, there was a lot to absorb in becoming the starting point guard for a Big Ten team. She had to learn new details and terminology. She was consumed with facilitating the Illini offense, and that didn’t always translate into her scoring a lot.
McEntire said Jackson is learning to make the right reads, not just in where to pass the ball but in when she should drive or shoot or how she needs to come off a ball screen as a smaller guard.
“Destiny can really score the ball,” McEntire said. “She has a lot going on in her mind, and she’s starting to take more shots and seeing lanes and gaps. She’s able to run the team and still find those, and she’s getting better at that. And that’s an area that will continue to improve. Her shot’s gotten better. We’ve just got to continue to put it into games.”
Jackson has scored in double digits in six of the last seven games after doing so in just four games previously. She and her coaches have talked about being more aggressive and attacking the basket more. Her 17-point performance against USC was her second-highest this season behind the 18 she scored against Murray State in November.
“I feel like that has really grown,” she said. “Toward the beginning of the season, I was kind of going in more relaxed, just trying to get my shot off, rather than now, I’m attacking. I’m going to either get fouled or I’m going to finish the layup.”
That Jackson is finishing inside against players who tower over her is nothing new. She has figured out how to use her physical gifts to her advantage.
“If you’re going to give up a lot of size, you have to be elite in different things,” Green told reporters at a recent practice. “She’s elite in her athleticism laterally to move and keep her chest over the ball, so now she can keep players further out so they’re not taking advantage of her size.
“If she gets them low, they’re going to shoot over her. She’s elite in her hands, so she can create a lot of steals and deflections. And then she knows how to finish around bigger people because that’s just what she’s done.”
Jackson’s increased scoring has helped supplement an offense led by sophomore forward Berry Wallace and freshman forward Cearah Parchment, who are averaging 18.9 and 13.3 points, respectively.
Illinois is one of the youngest teams in the nation, so it has needed players to step up beyond their years. Jackson has been a big part of helping the team find its footing, and she’s hopeful for what the Illini can do if they keep growing.
“The sky’s the limit,” Jackson said. “If we stay together, we keep learning with each other, growing with each other, we can do really special things.”
