'Pretty sick': Deja Kelly battles illness in Jumpman Invitational, surpasses 1,500 career points

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — What did Deja Kelly do all day waiting for a 10 p.m. tip-off?

She threw up.

Yet when head coach Courtney Banghart asked her if she was good to go, there was no hesitation from the senior guard.

"Coach, I’m playing."

“That’s Deja,” Banghart said. "She's tough."

In the No. 24 North Carolina women’s basketball team’s 61-52 win over Oklahoma in the Jumpman Invitational on Tuesday night, Kelly notched a team-high 21 points, played all but one minute. She had her very own "flu game" in an event named after the brand of Michael Jordan — who originated the term in his 1997 NBA Finals performance. The senior guard also surpassed 1,500 points in Carolina Blue in her 100th career game, joining an exclusive club of just 24 other former Tar Heels.

“This was her Michael Jordan game,” Banghart said.

And her 1,500th point couldn’t have been more timely.

Trailing for the entire game, Kelly had the chance to tie the game for the first time since tipoff. She drove to the left, stepped back, dropped Oklahoma sophomore guard Reyna Scott to the ground and rose up to take the shot. Scott watched the ball swish through the net from the floor of the Spectrum Center.

From there, North Carolina dominated, starting the second half with a 12-0 run — never relinquishing the lead from that point on.

Following her worst shooting performance of the season on Friday against Western Carolina, going 20 percent from the field, Kelly bounced back with a season-best 7-14 from the field. Kelly put the team on her back, scoring 18 of North Carolina’s 36 points in the first half on a 75 percent clip.

Add to the fact that she had been sick for the three days before the game, the fact she was throwing up during the media timeouts and even continued to be sick following the game, and the gravity of her performance starts to set in.

“Deja is a dog,” senior forward Alyssa Ustby said. “That girl will do anything for her teammates, and she knows how much she brings to our team and so being sick, and she was pretty sick, and so for her to come out here and to play so selflessly and to even get to the basket and just hold her own was remarkable.”

At a glance, it seems everything points towards the Tar Heels being Kelly's team — being the go-to closer in late-game situations, the team's leading scorer for a third consecutive season and easily the largest social media presence, amassing over 350,000 Instagram followers. Even Ustby — who was one of Banghart's first recruits alongside Kelly — thought so when she came to Chapel Hill, according to the head coach.

But no. It's their team. Kelly makes sure her co-captain knows.

“I think one of the things Alyssa’s leaving out too, though, is that I think she spent the first part of her career thinking it was kind of Deja’s team and Deja’s our leader and all that,” Banghart said. “I think Deja’s really made sure Alyssa knows, ‘This success is in large part because of you.’ I think your growth Alyssa is realizing this is also your team.”

The unselfishness that Banghart and Ustby alluded to from the senior guard is the same unselfishness that brought Kelly to play on Tuesday night, despite being sick for three days and throwing up throughout all parts of the day.

“Her actions meet her intentions,” Banghart said.

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