(Photo credit: Sierra Watson/WCSN)
One of the longest-running debates in basketball is which region of the United States produces the best players.
Legends like Reggie Miller, Cynthia Cooper, Cheryl Miller and Diana Taurasi provide the argument in favor of Los Angeles.
The likes of Breanna Stewart, Kareem Abdul-Jabaar, and Julius Erving provide a substantial rebuttal in favor of New York.
LeBron James headlines the talent from the Midwest, but Devin Booker, Isaiah Thomas and Candace Parker back him up.
A’ja Wilson, LaMarcus Aldridge, Karl Malone and Sheryl Swoopes represent the South at a high level no matter how far north they go to play basketball.
However, if you asked several Arizona State women’s basketball players, namely graduate guard Tyi Skinner and junior guards Jalyn Brown and Kennedy Fauntleroy, they’d have a different answer.
They’d probably tell you the Washington D.C, Maryland and Virginia (DMV) region, which produced stars like Allen Iverson, Carmelo Anthony and Kevin Durant, is home to the best hoopers. It’s also where Skinner, Brown and Fauntleroy grew up.
“I always say the DMV is the mecca of basketball,” Skinner said. “All the people we know, either they’re already in the league or they’re coming up behind us, and they’re going to the South Carolinas, they’re going to LSU, they’re going to all the big schools, like the people that’s under us. So I think we got a good generation-after-generation talent type thing in DMV. I don’t think it really stops. It’s never really too much of a drop-off, because we always the best, honestly.”
All three players hail from different parts of the DMV and experienced different journeys that led them to ASU. Skinner, who is from D.C., played two years at Delaware under head coach Natasha Adair. Skinner transferred to ASU when Adair took the head coaching job ahead of the 2022-23 season.
Brown came to ASU the following year. The Baltimore native spent her freshman year at powerhouse Louisville before finding a new home in Tempe.
Fauntleroy is the newest DMV addition. Arizona State is the third team Fauntleroy has played for. She started her career at Georgetown, which sits about 45 minutes east of Fauntleroy’s hometown of Upper Marlboro, Maryland. There she was named the 2023 Big EAST Freshman of the Year. Her previous stop before ASU was Oklahoma State.
Each of the athletes’ experiences on their previous teams led them to ASU. The trio has withstood all types of challenges, such as limited playing time and injury, that’s made them into the players they are today. How they’ve handled the adversity they’ve faced is an even larger testament to their upbringing in the DMV.
“All DMV kids, in my opinion, have this chip on their shoulder that I feel like they carry with them in everything that they do,” Brown said. “It makes us vocal. It makes us not be afraid to stick up for ourselves.”
This toughness, and resiliency as Skinner described it, is reflected in the on-court demeanor and play style of players from the area, including Skinner, Brown and Fauntleroy. The intrinsic scrappiness is what’s made Fauntleroy one of the team’s best defenders. It’s what’s made Skinner and Brown two of the most effective players in the Big 12 Conference at getting to the rim and the free throw line.
“It’s literally something in the water,” Fauntleroy said. “Like I’m tough, and it’s just a different type of mindset. We play gritty.”
“We want to win,” Skinner added. “We competitors. Everybody want to win, but I just feel like we want it a little bit more. So we’re going to show that in everything we do. And then when it comes off the court, I feel like we walk it, we talk it. It’s just a certain type of confidence, certain type of demeanor that we walk with. And regardless of if you better than me or not, it’s more so like, I’m not scared, I want all the smoke.”
Players from the DMV fill up Division I and Power Four rosters around the country, but few are as packed with DMV talent as ASU, especially west of the Mississippi River.
In addition to Skinner, Fauntleroy and Brown, junior forward Kadidia Toure has DMV roots, being from Silver Spring, Maryland. Adair herself is from the region and spent nine total seasons on staff at Georgetown. Assistant coach Camille Collier grew up in D.C. and saw coaching stops at Radford and Virginia Tech.
With how many individuals in the program have ties to the region it’s no surprise that many of the DMV athletes were familiar with each other before ending up on the same squad.
Despite being two years older, Skinner saw her fair share of Brown and Fauntleroy at AAU tournaments in the area, building up respect for each of them with every matchup. Brown and Fauntleroy grew up playing on the same AAU team, working in tandem for years to terrorize opponents.
“When I met Tyi, she was basically just like a big sister to me,” Fauntleroy said. “It was always a back-and-forth between me and her. And I’m just like, here we go again. Like, ‘Ugh, I gotta match up with her again.’ And it’s like, she finna drop a bucket. I’m finna drop a bucket. We going back and forth every time. And that’s where I feel like the respect had built for each other.
“[Jalyn] was on my AAU team. We played for Boo Williams. I think we really got close when we played for boo Williams, and then after that, I had recruited her hard to come to my high school team, and then we made that move. … Honestly, we’ve been following each other around forever.”
None of the athletes ever expected to find themselves playing in Arizona, let alone teaming up with other top prospects out of the DMV this far from home.
When Brown and Fauntleroy were in high school, they took a trip to Arizona State with their team. Both were already committed to their respective schools and only in attendance to satisfy their coaches.
“We were sitting in the stands … And we were like, ‘We’re not coming here,’” Brown said. “‘We like the gym, but we’re not coming here. We already committed.’ And it’s so ironic that now we’re both Sun Devils. So I never would have ever thought I would even be in Kentucky in the first place and then to end up in Arizona, that’s just even crazier.”
Earlier this season, ASU had the opportunity to travel to the East Coast for a pair of non-conference games. It was a homecoming for all three, as the Sun Devils faced Coppin State in its home gym and took on Maryland Eastern Shore as part of the Coaches vs Racism Roundball Classic at D.C.’s Entertainment and Sports Arena.
The Sun Devils finished the trip with split results, but it was an impactful trip that allowed the players to compete in front of family and friends who seldom or never made the trip west to watch them play.
“’I don’t really get to come home like that,” Skinner said. “And my little cousins, they’re coming to the game like, ‘Oh my God.’ They look at me in such this light, like, ‘Oh, Tyi made it.’ … I just loved it. It was just more so, like, heart-filling. My grandmother came for the first time. She’s never been to a game, ever, any game, so that was her first time seeing it in person. … It meant a lot to me because I know it meant so much to them.”
Going from the DMV to Tempe has impacted the lives of these players in more ways than one. Fauntleroy and Skinner both said being this far away from home has forced them to learn to be more responsible with money. This has been especially important for Skinner as she navigates the variety of NIL opportunities available to her as a Power Four athlete.
Brown’s experience in Tempe has also matured her. It’s prepared her for life after school and reinforced her values and perception of herself as both a basketball player and a person.
“I think that the world is so exciting, and it’s so many things that you can learn from just being an adult, being by yourself, and to be relentless in everything that you do,” Brown said. “If you’re gonna do anything, be great at doing it. Don’t be mediocre in anything that you do. I think that I carry that in every aspect of my life.”
Despite ASU’s ups and downs over the last three years and how the rest of this season goes, playing for Arizona State has been an influential journey for each of them.
Teaming up with other players from the DMV has enhanced the experience that much more and allowed them to bring a slice of the DMV to the desert.
“I know that everybody comes from different places, and so do we, but I just feel like everybody from the DMV has a winning culture behind them,” Fauntleroy said. “So I just think that creating the same kind of mindset, creating the same kind of the winning culture [here] that we come from, I think that’s the best thing that we can bring to the table as coming from the DMV.”
