Laila Phelia woke up one day last season in Austin, Texas and couldn’t see. A dark cloud had descended on her vision and panic quickly set in.
“Crazy thing is it happened, literally, in the blink of an eye,” Phelia told SB Nation. “I woke up one day and my eyelids were like a curtain — all black. Couldn’t see anything above or below. My vision was all distorted.”
Phelia rushed to an eye doctor where she was told she had a detached retina and needed emergency surgery. Doctors told Phelia that her injury wasn’t caused by something that happened in a practice or game, but rather genetics. Her retina had been slowly detaching over a long period of time.
And, they told her, her senior season of college basketball for the Texas Longhorns was over.
“After that, life really just hit. How am I supposed to explain to my parents that I just had eye surgery? It’s my senior year, and this is not what I planned,” Phelia said. “That was hard. It was rough.”
But through her recovery, as Phelia regained her full vision, she also acquired a new attitude and outlook on life and basketball. It took about two full months for her vision to come back — a span of time that included laser treatments and a second surgery, all while the Longhorns were advancing to the Final Four for the first time in two decades. It was literally and figuratively burdensome for Phelia to watch that, but she remained a supportive teammate.
Phelia then sought a reset after she was cleared to play again and entered the transfer portal. Because she only featured in eight games for Texas last season before her eye injury, the NCAA granted her an extra year of eligibility.
The 6-foot guard from Cincinnati, Ohio is now at Syracuse where she’s matching some of her career-best averages again, all while sporting protective eyewear, and has been a crucial component to the Orange’s 5-0 start to the season. On Sunday at noon ET on FS1, Syracuse will face its toughest opponent yet when it takes on No. 6 Michigan — where Phelia played for three seasons before her stop at Texas last year — in a nationally televised game.
It’s a clash that Phelia is looking forward to.
“Amazing, awesome, fun – I can’t wait. It’ll be great,” Phelia said of her feelings on facing the Wolverines. “It’ll be nice seeing Danielle Rauch, I played with her and she’s on staff now. So, I’m looking forward to seeing her out there.”
At Michigan, Phelia was a three-time All-Big Ten selection, earning a spot on the All-Freshman team in 2022, and then a pair of First Team nods as a sophomore and junior. She signed with the Wolverines as a four-star prospect, ranked as the 28th best recruit in her class in 2021 by ESPN.
With the Wolverines, Phelia blossomed into one of the Big Ten’s top players, a guard capable of scoring at all three levels. In the 2023-24 season, she led the Wolverines in scoring with 16.8 points per game. The season before, as a sophomore, she made 41.7 percent of her 3-point attempts and grabbed 4.2 rebounds per game.
The player that Phelia was at Michigan is the one that she’s trying to become again at Syracuse. It’s the player that Orange head coach Felisha Legette-Jack believes she can be again.
“She really built into me, just right off the visit. She’s such a great leader, such a great role model,” Phelia said of Legette-Jack. “She has helped me a lot, just regaining that confidence and reminding me all the time about the player I was before I sat out.”
After her junior season at Michigan, Phelia entered the transfer portal and became one of the most sought-after players available. She landed at Texas, where she was expected to pair nicely with Madison Booker, Rori Harmon and the rest of the Longhorns to create a contender in the SEC.
Texas became that, but without Phelia. She struggled to find a consistent role early in the season — Phelia never started in eight games, never topped 23 minutes of playing time, and only scored in double figures once — and then her eye injury derailed any opportunity she might’ve had to settle in with her new teammates.
Then, as Phelia recovered and watched from the sidelines, Texas went to the Final Four for the first time since 2003.
“It was very difficult, but I felt like with everything happening — you know, life is all about perspective. I still felt like I was part of the team and everything and was able to find my voice. I realized that it was tough, but everything happens for a reason and I was able to find light in that,” Phelia said. “It was an amazing run and I enjoyed cheering my teammates on.”
She added: “There was a lot of emotions and I just had a different perspective on basketball and life as a whole, because you never know when it can be taken from you. I took a deep dive into my faith and knew that this was all part of God’s plan… You can’t sit in it and question everything.”
After Texas lost to South Carolina in Tampa, Florida, Phelia entered the portal once more. Playing for a title contender was no longer a top priority, she just needed to find the best fit and a fresh start.
“It was different because I was coming off not playing the whole season,” Phelia said. “It was moreso, how do I get back to where I was? After speaking with Coach Jack, it was a no-brainer.”
Phelia said that Syracuse “checked all the boxes” when it came to her athletic and academic goals. She’ll graduate this May with a degree in communications, but before then is aiming to get the Orange back to the NCAA Tournament.
Syracuse is coming off a season where it went 12-18 overall and won just six games in the ACC. Just seven players returned to Syracuse from that team, and Phelia is now one of the most veteran players on a roster with nine underclassmen.
“The team that we have, the chemistry that we have on and off the court is so special,” Phelia said. “I’ve been on different teams, I’ve seen it, I’ve been to the Elite Eight and experienced the Final Four — that’s something I want to bring to this team, the experience and the leadership and just being able to know what it feels like to be on those floors, on those levels. With this team, it’s so exciting just seeing how everyone connects on and off the court, the family environment, the push, the competitiveness that we have, it’s something special and I’m so excited to be a part of that.”
Phelia has tried to lead by example with her play. On Friday night in a 12-point win over Utah — Syracuse’s first of the season over a Power 4 opponent — Phelia played a team-high 40 minutes and scored 14 points.
Michigan will be heavy favorites on Sunday against Syracuse, which was picked to finish 13th in the ACC in the conference’s preseason poll. But Phelia is out to prove doubters wrong. Her vision is clear now and she can see the potential in this team.
“We are under the radar. That’s the beauty of it,” Phelia said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do, but we can definitely make it happen.”
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