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Jacaira “Iggy” Allen basketball career has been defined by a persistent desire to hoop, in spite of injuries or other obstacles. Her collegiate career began at Mississippi State in the 2016-17 season before concluding at Old Dominion in the 2021-22 season. In between, she spent time at Miami in 2019-20 and Florida Atlantic in 2020-21, where she made the Conference USA All-Defensive Team.
Born and raised in Florida, the now 27-year-old 5-foot-11 guard is playing professionally overseas. Having already played in eight countries, she is now in country No. 9, Turkey, playing for Bodrum in the second tier of the Turkish KBL.
Allen recently spoke to Swish Appeal about the importance of religion in her life, overcoming injuries and her own country bucket list. Some highlights of our conversation include:
On the origins of her nickname:
I received that nickname my freshman year of high school, only few months into playing basketball. My coach had a nickname for everyone on the team but he couldn’t completely grasp a good nickname for me, so he asked one of the team captains. She then told him, “We should name her ‘Prodigy,’” and he’s like: “Well, I’m not going to just name her ‘Prodigy’, she has to earn the name.”The last three letters of ‘Prodigy’ are I-G-Y, so I’ve just added another “G” and everybody started calling me “Iggy.” I was supposed to earn the rest of my nickname, it was supposed to be “Prodigy”, but everyone just got used to calling me “Iggy,” I got used to it, and here we are.
On what made helped Mississippi State reach back-to-back Final Fours in 2017 and 2018:
The things that we were doing, I don’t think anybody in the country was doing. Coach Vic Schaefer had a big impact on my life. Offensively, defensively, he covered every part of the court. Since leaving Mississippi State, I haven’t experienced another practice like the kind of practices we’ve had with him. They were intentional. Our bench players and practice players came in and literally played as our opponents. They were doing the exact moves, so I knew that we were going to be a god team. Nobody in the country was working as hard as we were.
A special thank you to Thomas Prodromou of Flash Agency for arranging the interview.
