On the team roster for MSU women’s basketball, Moira Joiner is a “graduate guard.”
Not senior guard, or junior guard, or soph or frosh or redshirt.
“Graduate student” status allows Joiner to continue for an uncommon fifth eligible season at Michigan State. This is under a special NCAA provision, beyond the usual four years, for student-athletes who missed out on some earlier action during COVID-19 shutdowns.
Moira was the leader of Heritage High’s back-to-back state champs, 2018 and ’19. She indeed was disappointed that her first two college years were cut short by the pandemic, which started in winter 2020, but now her unexpected fifth campaign is emerging as the best of her career.
Covid’s damage cannot be fully restored, but the scenario has turned out today to be “a blessing in disguise,” she said last week, after pouring in a career-high 26 points during a runaway victory over DePaul. MSU has started with a won-loss 7-2 record, also the best during Moira’s time at a school where historic local stars Nanette Gibson-Davis, Annette Babers and Tori Jankoska stand tall in the legacy.
She’s averaging 15 points per game, shooting 55 percent overall and 40 percent on three-pointers.
Schoolwork opens door
The extra year for covid relief comes with a provision. Student-athletes must remain in graduate school to continue competing. But that’s been no problem for Joiner, because she’s a three-time Big Ten Conference All-Academic first-teamer.
She majored in business when she arrived in East Lansing, and her graduate studies are on the same path. She envisions a career in sports management, specializing in human relations, although she one day may launch her own enterprise of some sort. If it’s basketball- or sports-related, all the better. And coaching always remains an option.
So for someone with such a full load, we asked which daily challenge was more difficult — working out for an hour, or studying for an extra 60 minutes? Moira laughs with her answer that she prefers the training facilities, where she can sweat out the day’s ups and downs before she hits the books.
For anyone who says she makes her achievements seem effortless, she responds, “It’s not an easy job, going to school and playing (major college) basketball at the same time.”
‘It means everything’
As pandemic precautions slacked off, things became even tougher in a different new way during her junior year. A severe early-season concussion from a hard fall sidelined her for the final three months.
After her intensive physical and emotional recovery, she retrained at peak in summer 2022 and came back stronger than ever for her senior year.
As her transition evolved during the 2022 holidays, she told a Lansing State Journal reporter: “It means everything. There was speculation that I wasn’t supposed to play and I was going to be done with basketball. … Every minute I get out there I’m going to appreciate.”
But still, her senior season closed on a premature note, grinding to a close with February’s tragic campus shooting spree by an outside gunman.
Maybe the pros?
Joiner is among wise college athletes who make the most of their scholarships, providing alternative “parachute” career options in case a pro sports contract does not come forth. Nonetheless, she still aims to continue playing beyond Michigan State, whether it’s in the WNBA or overseas in Europe, where the women’s game remains popular. Gains in the United States have spotlighted such luminaries as A’ja Wilson, Diana Taurasi and point guard-turned-coach Dawn Staley.
“I would like to stay in basketball for as long as I can,” says the daughter of Will and Jerusha Joiner, who provided her first junior basketball and hoop. She began tossing up shots as a preschooler and hasn’t stopped.
It was far more than scoring that helped Moira at Heritage achieve state Player of the Year as a junior, and then Miss Basketball runnerup as a senior. Her team play also features defense as her staple, along with rebounding and passing and organizing the team on the floor in the manner of a scholar-athlete. She’s 5-foot-10, which is tall for a young woman her age, but merely a guard’s height in top-level college or pro hoops.
Her prospects for the pros may seem uphill because during her first four MSU seasons, she was regular in the player rotation but started for only about half the games, among the first off the bench in others. She received praise from Coach Suzy Merchant last year for her courageous recovery from the head injury and emerged with more playing time near the season’s end, which was stopped again when she finally was gaining Mo-mentum.
Merchant has retired after a career that began at SVSU during the 1990s and led to more than 500 victories over nearly 30 years, replaced on the Breslin bench by Robyn Fralick. Joiner has started every game under her new coach, aiming to lead her younger teammates to their first postseason bid after finishing in the middle of the Big Ten pack during Moira’s prior four seasons.
She predicts the fifth time will be a charm.
