SAN ANTONIO – Relentless.
To capture the essence of Nina De Leon Negron, one need only reference the single, meaningful word tattooed in script on her right arm. She added the ink this past May after committing to the UTSA women’s basketball program as a graduate transfer.
“It’s to remind me that you can do anything you set your mind to,” she said. “It’s motivation.”
De Leon Negron, a graduate transfer from UIW and the first Puerto Rican-born UTSA women’s basketball player, is now the engine that’s driving the Roadrunners’ historic 7-1 start to the 2024-25 season, the second-best record over the first eight games in program annals. The 5-foot-6 point guard ranks in the top-25 nationally in assist-to-turnover ratio (+2.92) and is providing significant leadership to one of the most talented teams in UTSA history.
“She has some really cool qualities about herself that you don’t hardly even see anymore,” UTSA’s fourth-year head coach Karen Aston said. “She was a wonderful gift – for our program, but also for our players. They understood that we really needed someone like her. They get to be around someone who has super confidence in herself and great leadership skills.”
Teammate Jordyn Jenkins, a preseason favorite for the American Athletic Conference Player of the Year honor, believes that De Leon Negron brings the basketball and leadership traits that the team needs to reach its collective goals.
“She’s brought a seriousness that we wish we would have had earlier,” Jenkins said. “She works really hard and is always in the gym. She is the point guard who is going to assist and facilitate, but she’s also going to shoot the three, so she gives opposing defenses a really good challenge.”
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De Leon Negron grew up in San Juan, the daughter of Angel and Denise, both of whom played collegiate volleyball in Puerto Rico. She was so drawn to basketball at an early age that Angel entered her into a basketball club called Las Vaqueras de Bayamon.
“I kind of got into it because every time I would see a ball, I would try to bounce it and dribble it,” De Leon Negron said. “My dad said ‘We should take her to a club.’”
De Leon Negron always knew she would play collegiate sports, like her parents, but never envisioned she would have the opportunity to compete at the Division I level in the United States. Added exposure from playing for the Puerto Rican National Team at the Centrobasket U17 Women’s Championship – De Leon Negron averaged 15.0 points per game and 5.0 assists per game during that event – ended up changing the course of her athletic career.
She came on the radar of Laura Harper, the coach of Monteverde Academy, a college preparatory school in the greater Orlando area that is well known for its basketball prowess. De Leon Negron was offered an opportunity to attend and compete for the school in her senior year of high school.
“Once I got the call to move to Orlando, I thought, ‘If I have the opportunity, why not do it?’” she said. “I have so many Puerto Rican friends that would love to have the opportunity and, since I had it, I thought, why not? At first it was hard and I felt homesick. I just kept saying that I wanted to make my family proud. The sacrifice has been worth it.”
It was during the experience at Monteverde that De Leon Negron began considering the possibility of playing high-level basketball in the United States.
“It had never been a dream because I didn’t think I could do it,” she said. “I was just thinking that I was going to go to a college in Puerto Rico. But once I moved to the United States my senior year, I was like, I think I can achieve that.”
De Leon Negron played her first two collegiate seasons at Austin Peay in Clarksville, Tenn. As a sophomore, she led her squad and ranked fourth in the Ohio Valley Conference with 111 assists on the year. De Leon Negron ranked among the top-60 players nationally with a +1.95 assist-to-turnover ratio, and helped lead the Governors to a postseason appearance in the Women’s Basketball Invitational.
She arrived in San Antonio in the fall of 2022 as a transfer to the University of the Incarnate Word. In two years there, she totaled 201 assists and charted six 20-plus-point performances. She was the Southland Conference Newcomer of the Year as a junior in 2022-23 and was a First-Team All-Southland Conference selection as a senior last season.
In her first season with the Cardinals, De Leon Negron turned in one of her best collegiate performances against UTSA, scoring 25 points. She made an immediate impression on Aston, who would later recruit her as a graduate transfer.
“She came on our radar because she kicked our tail two years ago,” Aston said. “We played against them and she just wore us out. You could really tell how competitive she was. We didn’t really have a grasp on her other qualities, but we knew her competitive spirit and we knew that she could contribute in that manner. We also knew she could shoot the 3 and thought it would help us to have another perimeter player that could stretch the floor.”
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De Leon Negron didn’t enter the graduate transfer process with any preconceptions about where she might play next. She knew countryman Jhivvan Jackson, UTSA men’s basketball’s all-time scoring leader, and he had told De Leon Negron about the school.
She thought her history of success against UTSA might be a barrier to her moving across town to play for the Roadrunners. What she found was quite the opposite; the candor of the UTSA coaching staff was a difference-maker in De Leon Negron’s decision-making process.
“I loved the coaches,” she said. “Once I got here and saw what the coaches were telling me, it felt like family, it didn’t really feel like business. The coaches told me the truth and I knew that they were telling me the truth. I knew that Coach Aston’s intentions were real and that’s kind of hard to find.”
Leadership is perhaps the trait that De Leon Negron has been most counted upon to bring to her new team. Joining a team as a fifth-year player and immediately taking the lead can be a challenge for even the most confident players, but De Leon Negron has handled it with grace.
“It’s probably what indicates who she is best of all,” Aston said. “That she was able to walk in here and blend so quickly with the group. I think it has just been a tribute to her personality and her skillset as a human being. She understands relationships. She literally came in here with the understanding and the concept of getting to know everybody and who they are, and she didn’t force herself or her personality on anybody. She has been accepted by the whole group.”
De Leon Negron admits that the situation was somewhat intimidating to enter, but the support of her coaches and, particularly, her teammates has made her transition nearly seamless.
“The first month was a struggle,” De Leon Negron said. “I had to prove myself. But I feel like it would have been like that at every single school that I could have gone to. The coaches just gave me that freedom since the moment that I walked in here. Coach would kind of say, ‘We brought Nina here because we needed a leader.’ The girls allowed me to do that. They started listening and there was never a problem with it.”
She perfectly navigated what could have been a challenging relationship with junior Sidney Love, a hometown favorite from nearby Cibolo who was one of Aston’s first recruits. Love’s commitment to UTSA early in her head coach’s tenure provided an early indicator to other top area players that the Roadrunners were taking big strides to become an elite program. Many of the talented student-athletes on UTSA’s current roster soon followed with their commitments to the program.
The Roadrunners have relied on Love, who came to the program as a point guard, to start since her freshman season of 2022-23. She had to quickly learn how to be an NCAA Division I floor general from the very beginning of her collegiate career. Love has moved to the shooting guard position with De Leon Negron earning the starting nod at point guard. What could have been an awkward situation has turned into a strong relationship.
“Sidney really had to learn her own way of doing things without having a role model,” Aston said. “I had some anxiety about bringing someone else in here with a now-three-year starter, but it has been really fun to see her relationship with Sidney and how they’ve meshed together. I think that Sid really looks up to her and has shown her a different way to be. And that’s super cool.”
The bond between De Leon Negron and Love has given the Roadrunners a dynamic backcourt that has been central to their success. Both players rank among the top-60 nationally in assists per game and are both equally threatening to opponents as scorers.
“We go into the film room with coach every single week and we watch point guard film,” De Leon Negron said. “Sidney has been starting since she was a freshman so she had to be a leader because she had no other choice. When you’re a freshman, that’s hard.”
From the outside, it also might seem unexpected that De Leon Negron has built a strong relationship with Jenkins, the 2022-23 Conference USA Player of the Year, whose name is synonymous with the program and brings definite star power to the roster after transferring from USC in 2022. It is a tribute to the humility and dedication of both players, as well as their shared goals for the program.
“Nina and I have really good chemistry,” Jenkins said. “I feel like a lot of people wouldn’t have expected it because she’s new. Her love and care for the game allows us to have that chemistry because we’re on the same page.”
De Leon Negron credits the closeness of her team for helping make her transition that much smoother.
“We hang out a lot outside of basketball,” she said. “We’re in each other’s apartments and we’re always talking. Nine times out of 10, we’re talking about basketball and the team.”
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As if destiny and reality are on the same track for De Leon Negron, she is constantly finding indications that things are falling perfectly into place for her.
For the first time in her collegiate career, she had the opportunity to play at home in front of her family when the Roadrunners traveled to San Juan to play in the Puerto Rico Clasico over Thanksgiving.
“Who would have thought?” De Leon Negron wondered aloud. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt a better feeling than what I felt at that first game when I saw my family there. It was amazing; I hadn’t felt that in years.”
In a pair of wins during her homecoming, De Leon Negron averaged 9.5 points per game, 6.0 assists per game and 5.5 rebounds per game. Her coach was equally delighted for her player to get to experience the moment with family.
“That was one of the coolest experiences I’ve had as a coach,” Aston said. “Mainly because of the fact that it wasn’t pre-planned. For that to play out the way that it did, for her to decide to come here and to be able to see her show everybody in our program her surroundings was really cool. You could tell that she was proud to be able to see her family and she got to spend Thanksgiving with them, which she probably hasn’t done since she first left home.”
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Over the years, De Leon Negron has modeled her game after two prominent Puerto Rican basketball players who have played at the highest level – former Dallas Mavericks player and Puerto Rican national team member J.J. Barea and former Atlanta Dream and University of Texas player Carla Cortijo. Cortijo was recruited and mentored by Aston, who was an assistant with the Longhorns at the time.
De Leon Negron’s passion for the game of basketball is palpable and she hopes to continue playing professionally once her time at UTSA has concluded.
“If I keep playing how I’ve been playing, I think that I would really like to [play professionally],” she said. “I know for sure that I would like to play in Puerto Rico but, if I ever get the opportunity to go overseas, I might just go ahead and take it.”
De Leon Negron earned her bachelor’s degree at UIW, where she was a member of the Dean’s List, and is currently pursuing a graduate certificate in health from UTSA’s College for Health, Community and Policy.
Regardless of when the ball stops bouncing for De Leon Negron, she never plans to be far from the game. She looks to pursue a career in coaching, a desire that has only been increased since she began playing for Aston.
De Leon Negron has built a strong bond with Associate Head Coach Jamie Carey, who was an All-Big 12 Conference point guard at Texas, where she was recently inducted into the Athletics Hall of Fame, and led the Longhorns to the 2003 NCAA Final Four. Aston, who was an assistant at Texas during Carey’s playing days, sees many of Carey’s best attributes in De Leon Negron.
“Nina puts everybody before herself and Jamie has that type of personality too,” Aston said. “Jamie’s a little more serious and Nina can be super bubbly at times. She has really helped our team change its personality because she balances out the seriousness of Jamie and I. I think she’s a real benefit in that manner. Her desire to study the game, to pick the brains of the people that she’s playing for, and then to get to know her teammates and what they need from her is very similar to Jamie. Those are all the point guard qualities that you’re looking for.”
Carey has become a pivotal mentor for De Leon Negron, guiding her to pursue her passion as both a point guard and, in the future, as a coach.
“Coach Jamie and I have had so many conversations about basketball and, every time, she’s like, ‘You need to be a coach.’” De Leon Negron said. “She helps me a lot. I feel like we see the game the same way.”
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For now, De Leon Negron is focused on helping the Roadrunners be the best team they can be on a daily basis. She won’t allow herself to get caught up in the statistics or the accolades or the wins. She embraces the process of being great.
“We’ve been working so hard and Coach keeps talking about stacking wins,” De Leon Negron said. “Even when we win, we don’t see it as we’ve won so many in a row, we just see it as another game. It’s just another step to reaching the goal. We can’t get too high or too low, we need to keep it neutral. That’s how I see it. That’s what championship teams do.”
And while she’s careful not to look too far ahead, De Leon Negron believes that this UTSA team has the potential to be one of the best in program history.
“We have a really talented team,” she said. “Everyone is talented in their own way. I say we can get to wherever we set our mind to. I really believe it.”