Rosie's 'sick' form that didn't feel possible

Featured image: @jeff.s.smith

To start 2026 Rosie Deegan never thought she'd play basketball again, all of a sudden the former Davidson College star is starring in the NBL1 West finals for Joondalup Wolves and she's excited about her future in the game again.

Deegan was always an exciting rising talent in Western Australia and even briefly flirted with an AFLW future when she signed at the West Coast Eagles, but she stuck with basketball and everything was going nicely four and-a-half years into her time at Davidson College.

She had always set her sights on a WNBL career and that was the plan once she finished college, but all of a sudden she injured a knee and then the surgeries, the pain and the devastation that's caused since has been lifechanging.

Deegan did attempt a return in the NBL1 West last season at the Rockingham Flames, but the pain relief needed to get on the court meant she didn’t look like the player she had been, and then the pain she dealt with when that wore off meant that it just wasn’t worth it.

So coming into 2026 and Deegan was settled into her new working life and was ready to think that basketball at least at an NBL1 level was behind her. Now all of a sudden eight months later and you wouldn’t even rule her out still getting to achieve that WNBL dream.

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It wasn’t until May 16 when Deegan first made it on the court this season at the Wolfpack but she had an immediate impact with 14 points against the Goldfields Giants.

She then had 24 the next week with 4/6 from the outside shooting against the Willetton Tigers to offer a glimpse of what she's still capable of.

It's been a juggling act since still dealing with the knee and having to cope with the load restrictions she's on, but what the 25-year-old continues to prove is how lethal she can be.

That was again on show in last Friday night's elimination final where she had 21 points with 4/10 shooting from downtown and the Wolves stunned the fifth placed Mandurah Magic to set up a semi-final battle on Thursday night with the Warwick Senators.

Given how far away playing at this level felt for Deegan coming into 2026, she's treasuring every moment she is now experiencing out on the court.

"This season's been sick for me just because I never thought I was going to play again and a lot of people around me didn’t think I was going to play again, and we were coming to terms with that," Deegan said.

"But to kinda get back on the court after two and-a-half years of everything and anything, it was a real success and then to be playing the kind of basketball I'm getting to play at the moment with this group is really something.

"It's a dream come true because it didn't look that possible not that too long ago. I can't complain too much."

Suddenly the future is looking bright

Having spent most of her life up to that point dreaming of playing professionally, Deegan was ready to accept that it might no longer be possible by the end of 2025 and she was working full-time, and ready to move on.

But new Joondalup coach Mitch Langford showed an interest so she thought she'd give it one more shot albeit cautiously and with not setting any expectations.

However, three months on from that first game with the Wolves, Deegan is feeling surprisingly good with her knee and her game is all coming back to her to the point where she's now already excited to this off-season and what 2027 is going to look like.

"Obviously it's great and I've been put in great positions to be successful by Mitch and the club obviously supported me through that start of the season where they signed a player who had been a college hot shot but wasn’t playing and was taking her time," Deegan said.

"So that can be hard for a club, but they were really patient with me so to be kind of able to reward them by playing some good basketball is nice while proving a little to myself that I am still the player that I was in college, and that I can get back to the level that I was at and even better than what my ceiling was in college.

"Every game I now can stack together and every time my knee gets through a game, and I'm performing and getting more comfortable, it just is a huge win.

"Last year I didn’t look like myself at all and I can admit that, but now I think stylistically I look a lot more comfortable out there on my knee and am starting to get my athleticism back.

"Even now I'm still on loading restrictions and for the lack of a better term, I'm raw dogging these games just with whatever talent I have left in my one good leg.

"But it's really exciting for me to prove that I can still be this player this year and then next season hopefully I can push that ceiling a lot more without having those restrictions."

Career-threatening knee injuries

Before Deegan left Perth for college, she had the world at her feet and had the choice to be part of the first ever West Coast Eagles team in the AFLW or to head to Davidson.

She chose the college path and even though Covid happened in between, things were going well starting with 15.9 points a game as a rookie and then another 13.9 points and 2.7 assists by the end of the fourth year.

The fifth season was going well too until tragedy struck with a serious knee injury that will never now be 100 per cent again.

There were times including by the end of 2025 that Deegan thought it had ended her career too, but she is feeling like her old self again and those dark days she hopes are behind her.

"For the lack of a better word, it was pretty devastating what happened in college when I blew the knee out in my fifth year when we were obviously ranked at the time," Deegan said.

"It was a really big thing for Davidson College and for me as a player but then my knee has just been an atrocious kind of thing ever since. I've had like three surgeries, I've had one botched surgery and I have struggled with chronic pain.

"To be honest, seven months ago my surgeon said he didn’t think I'd play again and I tried to play for Rocko last year, and I was a shadow of my former self.

"I was in so much pain and I was on so many drugs trying to get through a game that it just wasn’t worth it in the end for the pain I was in just in daily life.

"I couldn’t even walk up stairs or anything so my knee has been a bit of a ride, but it's got me to find things outside of basketball that are important.

"Coming out of college my plan was pretty set to go straight to WNBL and play basketball for the foreseeable future so my knee did pivot those things."

Peaking at the right time

While things have taken a heart warming upward turn for Deegan, the Wolfpack have made a stunning late season run too to now be one win from a preliminary final as they take on the Senators on Thursday night at Warwick Stadium.

The Wolves were sitting last by the time they were 2-7 following three straight losses including falling to the eventual wooden spooners the South West Slammers, but then things started to click.

Joondalup beat the defending champion Cockburn Cougars on their home floor and then beat two fellow playoff teams the Goldfields Giants and Mandurah Magic in the last two rounds to lock in a playoff spot.

Still they were coming in from eighth spot, but they beat the fifth ranked Magic in Mandurah last Friday night and this time, Deegan might be part of a team clicking at the right time.

"I think I've always been part of teams that weirdly peak at the wrong time and maybe that's me affecting that, but it feels like with this team we're coming into our stride at the right time," Deegan said.

"We obviously really struggled early on in the season but we always had those small glimpses like when we beat East Perth really early and then we beat Cockburn, but then we'd lose to the bottom teams and lost to Bunbury.

"So I think we were very inconsistent, but the talent was there and just were streaky with how we were playing.

"We have AJ, Kim, Yemiyah, they're really dangerous players if they get loose and Kim's obviously been getting loose an incredible amount and they can all put on a score pretty quickly.

"But it's just been about getting those pieces to find their right stride and a lot of times one player would have a big game and others would be quite quiet, and that makes it hard to win too many games.

"But I think now we're a little bit more playing together and you can see that because we're becoming a bit harder to stop. It does feel like we're peaking at the right time but Senators will be a match up challenge for us so it will be a good test to see where we're at with that kind of aspect."

A free swing in finals

With a team featuring imports Yemiyah Morris and Asianae Johnson, and then fellow recruits Kim Pierre-Louis, Awatea Leach and Rui Mima along with locals like Deegan and Ella Thornton-Elliott, and if things clicked, it was always a Joondalup team capable of doing some damage.

They've won three straight games all against teams who finished above them and Deegan likes the nature of the pressure all being on the Senators in Thursday night's semi-final.

The same will then be the case for the Rockingham Flames on Saturday night should they reach the preliminary final.

"When you only sneak into finals in eighth place on percentage, you're just kinda happy to be there in the first place and then with that it lets you play with a bit of freedom," Deegan said.

"But because we'd been winning those last few games before finals and even when we played Rocko and we didn’t win and I wasn’t playing, but we still played really well against them.

"So I feel like we had a lot of faith in our group that on any given day we could really challenge these top teams and we don't really have much pressure on us.

"We were bottom of the ladder seven games in so for us it is like a free swing with every game we're going to play in this finals series and the pressure is going to be on the opposition.

"We can play freely and just rise to the challenge so I think the ball's in their court most definitely and we'll see how we go."

Taking time for a new group to click

Given how many new faces there were at the Wolves this season including a new coach and especially with Johnson, Pierre-Louis, Morris and Mima playing NBL1 for the first time, Deegan wasn’t surprised things have taken a while to click.

But now that they have found their groove, they are playing with great confidence and not putting on any ceiling on what's possible.

"I think with a lot of imports or people who aren’t based in Australia, there's also a lot of stylistic differences that we had to make through, and figure out the best ways for us to play," Deegan said.

"Obviously we have some incredibly talented individual players but it's how do those pieces fit together and a lot of the other NBL1 teams probably had a more solid groove coming into the season, and added some pieces.

"Whereas for us, we didn’t really have that grounding and AJ was added late, I dripped in late too and we were always kinda expecting to struggle a little bit at the start while finding our footing.

"That struggle happened for longer just because of those stylistic differences, but what you're seeing now is that we still have those cross-continental stars and differences, but they're now fitting together more and more the more we play together.

"It becomes far easier to play when you understand each other's dynamics and that unfortunately just takes a lot of time, and that's what you saw earlier in the season with our struggles.

"We just couldn't work it out compared to other teams who already had that structure in their core group but now it's starting to work for us."