On the court, Trevesha Jackson is surrounded by scorers. Away from it, those same scorers’ voices seem to carry just a bit louder than hers.

Just don’t be fooled, point guard Whitney Boddie said. Jackson’s no slouch in either area, particularly in the vocal department.

“People think she is quiet, but she talks a lot, and she won’t shut up sometimes,” Boddie said. “She’s her own individual person. She’s in her own category.”

That indecipherable quality Jackson carries in her outward demeanor matches her in-game production.

Jackson doesn’t score a lot of points (6.9 per game) and isn’t exactly a force at rebounding (4.9 per game), but her presence in the paint for the undersized Tigers has been key to their prolific run through the season.

Ask her teammates, her current coach Nell Fortner or her high school coach, Auburn High’s Terryland Dawson, and they’ll all say the same thing.

Jackson does the things that don’t appear on the stat sheet.

“She might not score all these points or get a lot of rebounds,” Boddie said. “But she just does the intangibles.”

Jackson didn’t have to worry about the intangibles at Auburn High, where she stuffed nearly every category of the stat sheet. Jackson did it all for the Tigers throughout her career, pulling in the Opelika-Auburn News’ All-Area Girls Player of the Year her senior season.

But she wasn’t ready for Auburn University, whom with she signed, straight out of school. Jackson needed to learn how to work hard and lose weight because the game wouldn’t come as easy to her at the other Auburn, Dawson said.

“She made the mental adjustments about getting in shape, working hard and getting ready to play,” Dawson said. “And that’s what she’s doing for Auburn now.”

Jackson enrolled at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College and spent one year there before transferring back to Auburn.

“I saw a whole different side of basketball,” Jackson said.

Jackson lost 20 pounds during her time at the junior college. It depleted her size, which she might be able to use now as she bodies up against someone bigger in almost every game, but it helped her become quicker.

“The bigger they are, the slower they are,” Jackson said, “So I’m able to run the floor faster than them.”

Jackson’s added stamina has come in key this season, as her role largely increased when fellow post player Jordan Greenleaf went down for the season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament.

Jackson’s minutes quickly jumped from the 18-23 to the 27-33 range, as she only has one true backup in KeKe Carrier.

Her job, while unable to be backed up by the many statistical categories in basketball, has been up to task.

“It’s like we never lost (Greenleaf),” senior DeWanna Bonner said. “She came in and picked up what Jordan was doing. She’s just a big part of our starting lineup, so I think she’s done a great job of coming in and defending and stepping up.”

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