New York-based Jeter, Stony Brook University forward Kirsten Jeter is all about the "W."Which is why when women's basketball coach Michele Cherry told Jeter she was only a few games away from reaching 1,000 career points and 500 rebounds as a junior, Jeter reacted as if you'd told her it might rain tonight.
"She was like, 'Oh, OK, whatever,' " Cherry said. "Later on, she thought, 'Well, I guess that was kind of a big deal.' But she doesn't even worry about that kind of stuff.
"She's just really, really determined and wants to win. She's extremely competitive. It's about winning. She [couldn't] care less how we get there; she just wants to win."
But the 5-10 Jeter, an Elmont Memorial High School product, has reached those milestones for the Seawolves (9-19, 7-9 America East). She is the sixth woman at Stony Brook to amass 1,000 points and 500 rebounds.
On Feb. 17, while recording 22 points in a 69-59 loss to Boston University, she scored her 1,000th point on a layup with 6:12 left in the game. Jeter became the 14th woman in school history to reach the plateau and only the sixth to do it in her third year.
She had 19 points and 15 rebounds, the 14th of which gave her 500, in a 59-52 overtime loss to Albany on Feb. 10.
Jeter - a powerful inside player who was named to the America East all-rookie team as a freshman and to the all-conference third team as a sophomore - said she didn't realize it when she reached those milestones, and that it took her a while to celebrate the achievement after the games ended.
"I pretty much put that to the back burner," she said. "I wasn't really excited at that moment. But I was a little excited after I got over the loss."
It's that commitment to team over self that has allowed Jeter - who finished the regular season with averages of 14.2 points and 7.4 rebounds per game after recording 22 points and eight rebounds in yesterday's 59-48 win over UMBC - to excel during a sub-.500 season. That devotion to the game was something Cherry said she noticed as soon as she got her first look at Jeter.
"She's a hard worker; that's the first thing," said Cherry, whose team will compete in the conference tournament this week. "And a kid that works as hard as she does, a kid that's as passionate and competitive as she is, you could see she was in for a good career. You knew that if she stayed relatively healthy, you could kind of sense that she would be a special player."
Jeter's health has held up, and so has the consistency. And she has stayed grounded and relatively unaffected while she approached the career milestones.
"I just tried to keep it off my mind," she said in typical low-key fashion. "In any game, scoring is pressure, so I didn't let the 1,000 points affect me. I pretty much just listen to my music to get into my own mind-set and world to get ready for games and block everything else out."
Jeter said the dual accomplishments certainly are nice, but they weren't benchmarks she set for herself before beginning her college career.
"I didn't set that as one of my goals,'' she said. "It just happened that way."
