When you hear a quote like this, it’s worth considering that Bria Medina has one of the most feel-good transfer-portal stories in college sports today — going from Division III to the Big Ten Conference.
“I don’t have an agent. I’m not ESPN-ranked. I’m not a five-star. This is crazy,” the newest Iowa women’s basketball signee told the Des Moines Register in a May 14 interview. “This is all new to me. I’m not in the D-I realm. I don’t know how all this works. Don’t know NIL. Don’t know none of that stuff. I’m just here to play basketball.”
Medina, Division III’s No. 2 scorer nationally as a Knox College junior last season, will go from playing in front of about 50 fans a night to 15,000 by joining the Hawkeyes for her final year of eligibility.
The transfer portal these days can be associated with a negative stigma, with some young athletes (often fueled by their parents and/or agents) putting dollars ahead of the team concept or unforgettable experiences. But Medina’s story is what’s easy to root for in college sports.
Medina is coming to Iowa knowing she’ll likely get much less playing time than the 36 minutes per game she averaged as a junior. She’s not coming for oodles of NIL money, either — though the full-ride scholarship is certainly a nice perk vs. paying thousands annually to play basketball at the D-III level.
“I was wanting to push myself and get better,” Medina said of making the jump to Division I. “And how much better can you do than coach (Jan) Jensen? I mean, she’s awesome, and all her staff. I know I’m definitely going to develop, no matter how much playing time I get.”
How unlikely is this story?
Coming out of high school in Tucson, Arizona, Medina wasn’t even planning to play college basketball. Her cousins, Mae and Kylie Callahan, had played for Knox but following a school-record 22 wins in the 2022-23 season were without a coach after Kira Mowen took a Division II job. The school didn’t hire a new coach until October 2023.
“I wasn’t really recruited,” Medina said. “(My cousins) were just like, ‘Come join the team. We don’t have a head coach. So just come.’ I was like, ‘OK, sure, whatever.’”
So, she did.
And Medina’s life changed forever with that decision.
Her freshman year, she met her future fiancé. Joshua Stewart, originally from New Zealand and the Knox men’s team’s leading scorer, will stay in Galesburg, Illinois, for his final season while Medina plays at Iowa. The two will no longer get to ride the team bus together to road games (often men’s/women’s doubleheaders), but that’s OK — this is an opportunity of a lifetime for Medina.
“It’s only an hour and a half (away), so it’s not bad at all,” Medina said. “That was another big thing, I wanted to be close to him. He’s everything (to me), he’s my rock.”
Medina was more of a facilitator at Salpointe Catholic High School in Tucson, where she won a 2022 state championship while averaging nine points a game. One of her teammates was Taliyah Henderson, a four-star recruit who first went to North Carolina and now is at Clemson. She averaged 11 points as a senior. At 5-foot-6, she had limited college interest — from D-II and D-III schools — but once she got to Knox, her scoring exploded.
“I just started getting buckets, I guess,” Medina said. “And then it just continued and continued.”
Her freshman year, she averaged 16.9 points per game, mostly with her quickness and drives to the hoop. Her sophomore year, that upped to 18.2 per game. She averaged 23.6 as a junior, scoring as many as 40 points in a single game, in Knox’s 13-13 season. She will leave Knox as the program’s all-time leading scorer (1,524 points) in just three years.
Medina’s foray into the transfer portal was more to see what kind of interest she would get, not a signal of unhappiness at Knox.
About a dozen Division I schools reached out, but the only one she seriously considered was Fairleigh Dickinson — which happened to be Iowa’s first-round NCAA Tournament opponent. She liked FDU, based in New York, but it was far away and many of her academic credits (she’s an education major) wouldn’t transfer there.
Then, a few weeks ago, Iowa assistant coach Randi Henderson reached out to express the Hawkeyes’ interest in her.
“I almost passed out,” Medina said. “I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? I was just watching your game against FDU imagining what it would be like to play for you guys.’ And then she messaged me, so that was crazy. I couldn’t believe it.”
Medina took her visit to Iowa on May 12 and met current players Chit-Chat Wright, Taylor Stremlow, Journey Houston and Layla Hays. She committed the next day, along with Swedish freshman Ella Stromdahl (who was on the same visit) to bring the Hawkeyes’ 2026-27 roster to 11 players — where it likely will stay when summer practice begins June 15.
The tentative plan is to live with Stromdahl in Iowa City, but right now everything is a chaotic whirlwind for Medina.
“I can’t believe it, still processing it. Definitely nervous, but more so excited,” Medina said. “You have to have confidence and faith in the coaching staff that they see something in me that I’m valuable to them in some way.”
Medina is fully aware that going from D-III to D-I — let alone the Big Ten — is a major jump. Her speed, ball-handling and free-throw shooting (86.9% on 8.8 attempts per game as a junior) will be the most viable on-court skills that will immediately translate to Iowa, which went 27-7 last season and earned a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Talking to Medina, her bubbly personality and humility stand out. She seems like an ideal fit for Iowa’s team-first culture that has been the central piece of the Hawkeyes’ success over the past 26 years under the retired Lisa Bluder and now Jensen, who loves the 11-woman roster she and her staff have assembled.
From Iowa’s perspective, Medina wasn’t brought in to save the day. The Hawkeyes seem to have a pretty established top eight or nine after their transfer-portal activity. Whatever Medina is able to add is a bonus.
From Medina’s perspective, she gets an unbelievable chance to compete at the highest level of women’s college basketball.
From almost not playing at all in college to suiting up for one of the nation’s most visible programs, it’s a tremendous and uplifting story.
“I’m just going into it with an open mindset of they’re giving me this opportunity, they obviously see something in me (and believe) I can help in one way or another,” Medina said. “… Whatever we’ve got to do to win. If that means me on the bench, then that’s me on the bench, but I’m going to do everything I can in practice to get them better and just do my part.”
Hawkeyes columnist Chad Leistikow has served for 31 years with The Des Moines Register and USA TODAY Sports Network. Chad is the 2023 INA Iowa Sports Columnist of the Year and NSMA Co-Sportswriter of the Year in Iowa. Join Chad’s text-message group at HawkCentral.com/HawkeyesTexts. Follow @ChadLeistikow on X.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Bria Medina’s wild path to Iowa women’s basketball | Leistikow
Reporting by Chad Leistikow, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
