If you weren’t looking for her, you might not have even noticed Kansas basketball guard Laia Conesa during her freshman season as a Jayhawk.
Surrounded by a trio of fifth-year seniors and all-time greats in Holly Kersgieter, Zakiyah Franklin and Taianna Jackson — not to mention blue chip freshman S’Mya Nichols — and joining the squad as the only native Spaniard, it was easy for Conesa, who hails from Barcelona, to blend in or fade to the background during the 2023-24 season.
A kidney injury just a few days before the season began only added to her anonymity, and by the time she was back and feeling even remotely comfortable, half the season was already gone.
None of that stopped Conesa from fighting. But all of it slowed her progress.
“When I got here, I was like, ‘They are so good,’” Conesa recently told R1S1 Sports during her first one-on-one, sit-down interview as a Jayhawk. “I was trying to learn the plays and the language, and they helped me with everything they can, but practicing with them was challenging. They made me better, though. And watching them play was really great.”
KU coach Brandon Schneider was super-excited about the pick-up when the Jayhawks signed Conessa. He had been to Spain to recruit her and seen her game in person, both with her club team and her national team. When she was at her best, Conesa was a free-flowing, fast-moving, play-making hooper.
The transition to the college game was always going to be an adventure, but when you combine that with the culture change, too, no one knew how Conesa would adapt.
She needed a mentor and a friend. Enter Kersgieter.
KU’s all-time leader in 3-point shooting was a bona fide veteran last year and one of the clear leaders of the team. She also wasn’t going to let anything get in the way of her goals for her final season as a Jayhawk. Team goals.
But she also liked Conesa and saw something in her. So, when she was given her instructions for how to handle the new freshman — put her through it, but take care of her, too — she knew exactly how to approach it.
She would treat Conesa the way she would want someone to treat her if she were in that position.
“My immediate vibe to her was, ‘I’m here for you and I’m going to help you and coach you, but I’m not gonna hold your hand while doing it,’” Kersgieter told R1S1 Sports during a recent phone interview.
Kersgieter admits now that she didn’t think there was a chance that Conesa would come to Kansas when she met her on her visit. Here was a Spanish-speaking freshman who had a sheepish personality and didn’t know much English or anyone in America looking to join an older team of established veterans who she would have trouble communicating with on a daily basis, on and off the floor.
“Props to her, though,” Kersgieter said, noting that she was hard on Conesa in those early days, both physically and mentally. “There were so many times when she could’ve just cut me off and leaned on someone else, but she never did that. Not every single day, of course, but the only way to get through it is to literally get through it. It’s about survival and she’s surviving.”
Even though the two are no longer teammates, Conesa still keeps in close contact with Kersgieter. They share a sibling-like bond and talk regularly on the phone and whenever Kersgieter can get to a game.
“She means a lot to me because she was the first person to help me,” Conesa said of Kersgieter. “I think she knew it was hard for me to come here to a different country, away from your family, and she was there for me all the time. And she’s still there.”
In English and Spanish.
Last season, with very few people to communicate with in her native tongue, Conesa taught Kersgieter a little Spanish and the two had fun with that.
Spanish is one of the four or five languages that senior center Danai Papadopoulou, of Greece, speaks fluently. So, Conesa had her to lean on a little last year. Schneider also speaks decent Spanish and Conesa said Nichols entertains her with her efforts to speak Spanish.
“She’s funny,” Conesa said.
This year, freshman Carla Osma, who hails from Madrid, Spain, and rooms with Conesa, has changed the dynamic quite a bit.
Conesa said it’s nice to have someone she can have an easy conversation with outside of basketball, and noted that when they’re at home they talk Spanish almost exclusively. The two knew each other before teaming up in Lawrence from their time playing together on various Spanish national teams.
On the court, it’s a mixture between those two speaking Spanish and also blending in with their teammates through English.
“On the court, it was easier to communicate,” Conesa said. “When I was in my academy in Spain, we used the same terms, like flares, screens. So, it was pretty much the same. But, off the court with my teammates it was hard.”
That, too, has gone smoother this season. Not only in the eyes of Conesa, but others, as well. After taking an English as a second language course for four hours a day during her freshman year, Conesa is down to just regular classes and whatever additional English she can pick up in those this year.
“Her English is so much better,” Kersgieter said. “Even just our conversations that we have as friends, I can just tell she’s getting more comfortable, she’s more confident speaking and she talks faster, too. I definitely think that helps.”
Added Conesa: “School is harder, but English is easier now.”
That concept applies to many aspects of Year 2 for Conesa at Kansas.
After a slow start that saw her pressing a little too hard because she so badly wanted to make an impact and hold down an important role, Conesa settled in and started to look like her old self.
She played loose and free, attacked on offense, competed hard on defense and didn’t care where she landed when bigger Big 12 guards tossed her still-skinny frame onto the floor or into the padding under the basket.
“She has terrific mental fortitude,” Schneider said of Conesa’s willingness to just keep competing. He compared her approach to that of a quarterback who throws a couple interceptions in the first half but hangs in there and leads the game-winning drive late.
“She's a competitive, fiery person,” Schneider said. “She's just, off the court, very mild mannered. But I think once she's in a competitive environment, (that fiery competitor becomes) her mentality.”
Conesa's progression this season was so rapid — almost like flipping a switch overnight to the outside world — that KU coach Brandon Schneider went out of his way to express how proud he was of the sophomore guard after one early-season home win.
The reason? Because she didn’t quit and just kept battling.
“When Laia’s free and loose, she definitely has a great basketball IQ,” Kersgieter said. “Now that they have her at the 1 some, she definitely has that assist mindset instead of thinking, ‘I need to score.’”
Finding her footing at the lead guard position also has done wonders for the rest of Conesa’s game and confidence.
During a recent win at Houston, she scored 11 points and added a career-high 10 rebounds to go along with an assist and two steals.
Four nights later, during a 57-50 home win over Texas Tech, she added 10 points and 5 rebounds while playing 39 of the game’s 40 minutes.
Heck, back in November, during KU’s 81-64 win over North Alabama, Conesa even recorded her first career block.
Nights like those are a far cry from her debut last season. In that one, during a KU win just before Christmas, she experienced a classic freshman moment on her way to the bench after checking out for the first time.
With the official holding up his hand to stop play, Conesa high-fived him on her way to the bench.
“That was so embarrassing,” she said when looking back.
All of it, though — the success, the consistent time on the court, the production and her growth — has taken Conesa, who just celebrated her 20th birthday on Jan. 20, back to her roots in the game and why she started playing in the first place at 7 years old.
A big part of it came from her father, David, who played in his younger days and has always loved the game. In fact, even with the 7-hour time difference between Lawrence and Barcelona, David and Laia’s mother, Ivette Calvet, are often up in the wee hours of the morning watching the games on ESPN+ or following along with the action on X.
David, who boasts 483 followers, even likes to add his own commentary on game nights.
After a 75-66 road win at Oklahoma State on Jan. 4, David responded to the graphic KU posted on its social media accounts with the following quip, in English: “Please send a defibrillator to Barcelona. These matches are heart-stopping!”
“He loves basketball,” Conesa said of her father, who spent two weeks in the States last year and caught a few of his daughter’s games while he was here. “And he loved the environment, here at Allen Fieldhouse and America in general.”
So, too, does Conesa. Not all of it necessarily. She’s slow to adopt American slang as her own and also said, “not the food,” when asked about her favorite parts of the U.S.
It’s all a product of her path to basketball and her ability to play the game she loves.
She hopes to play professionally in Europe when she’s done at KU but also is really looking forward to what the rest of this year and the next two years will bring with them.
So is Kersgieter, who said she is proud of Conesa in that older-sister sort of way but also noted that, someday soon, she’s going to have to remind her friend and former teammate that next year she’ll be a veteran with the Jayhawks and her mindset will have to shift from survivor to leader.
There’s still time for Conesa to figure that out, Kersgieter said. And in season might not be the time to burden her with that kind of thinking.
For now, it’s time to smile and celebrate the way Year 2 has been everything Conesa hoped it would be and exactly what others envisioned for her.
“The fact that she’s still here and she’s still fighting and you can see her improvement in her game and on her face, she’s doing amazing,” Kersgieter said. “She really is.”
— For tickets to all KU athletic events, visit kuathletics.com
