POCATELLO — Tomekia Whitman’s confidence shines through even off the court.

“I love how she sticks up for herself,” Idaho State head women’s basketball coach Seton Sobolewski said about the freshman guard. “Sometimes the older girls will tease a freshman about something, or make some type of comment ... and the freshman will just smile and laugh about it. (Whitman) will defend herself, and she’ll stick up for herself. She doesn’t take crap from anybody, and I love that, I love that about her personality.”

Of course, it’s a mindset that’s helped Whitman on the basketball court as well.

When Estefania Ors suffered a season-ending knee injury late in ISU’s game against Arizona State on Dec. 8, it left the Bengals not only without their best scorer, but also without any proven options to replace her in the starting lineup and take the bulk of her 27 minutes per game.

It’s been Whitman who’s helped ease the sting of Ors’ injury, at least on the court. Since the Arizona State game, the freshman has started nine games in a row, averaging 31 minutes and 9.7 points per game in that stretch.

Sobolewski admits that giving that many minutes to a freshman is something he wants to do very rarely, if at all. But Whitman’s confidence has helped her transition from playing in high school a year ago to playing big minutes for an ISU team with high expectations.

“I thought she had a chance to play this year,” Sobolewski said. “I thought she’d be coming off the bench a lot. I thought it would be like how it was in the beginning of the year with (Ors) starting and then she’s the first sub off the bench. But she’s playing more than we all thought, and that’ll just make next year even better.”

Whitman’s background, with elite athletes on every side, helps explain her comfort and confidence in an expanded role. Her older brother, Noah Whitman, plays soccer at the University of Washington.

Tomekia initially followed in his footsteps as a soccer player. She switched to basketball in middle school after a friend’s grandfather asked her to play on the team that he coached, and she fell in love with the game.

At Central Valley High School in Spokane Valley, Washington, she came up a year behind the Hull sisters, Lexie and Lacie, who were the Seattle Times’ co-State Players of the Year their senior year and now play at perennial top-five program Stanford. Lacie was on the Pac-12’s All-Freshman team in 2018-19, while Lexie was honorable mention.

Hailey Christopher, who’s playing nearly 30 minutes a game for Idaho this season, was also in that class at Central Valley.

“Getting to grow with them and play with them throughout those years was really fun and exciting,” Whitman said. “It definitely helped me push my basketball boundaries. ... In practice and stuff, I would play against them, which really pushed me. When I played against better people, it was bettering me.”

Needless to say, Central Valley won a lot. Whitman has two Washington state championships on her resume, from 2016 and 2018, as well as a national title in 2018, when Central Valley beat Hamilton Heights Christian from Tennessee in the championship game of the High School Basketball Nationals tournament in New York.

“She’s played at a really high level,” Sobolewski said. “When you’ve played in a national championship game in New York City and you’re the best team in the country...there isn’t much she hasn’t seen. So there’s a lot of ways she’s prepared and confident.”

Recruiting a player from a team of that caliber was a blessing and a curse for Sobolewski, who targeted Whitman because he liked her ability to affect a game with her defense, rebounding and athleticism.

On one hand, because she played on a famous team, every coach in the country had a chance to see Whitman, or at least know who she was.

On the other, she still flew under the radar a little bit because the Hull twins (and Christopher, to a lesser extent) drew all the eyeballs.

Whitman didn’t become the main attraction for Central Valley until her senior year, when those three had graduated, and by that time, she had committed to Idaho State.

Whitman, who was also interested in ISU’s nursing program, picked the Bengals over interest from Eastern Washington and Montana, among others.

“I went on a couple visits, but when I got here, I just felt an instant connection with the girls,” Whitman said. “I loved coach Sobolewski and all the assistants here ... and I just felt like this was a home away from home for me. When I got here, I just felt like this could be my new family, when I left home, and that’s exactly how it’s been.”

Now, Whitman is playing a bigger role for the Bengals than anyone imagined. The last freshman to match Whitman’s 8.2 points per game for Idaho State was, ironically, the person she replaced — Ors, who put up 9.5 ppg and won the Big Sky Conference’s Freshman of the Year award in 2016-17.

To help manage the increased responsibility, Whitman took a narrow focus, drilling down on the skills that Sobolewski first noticed in her as a high schooler.

At 5-foot-10, she’s a long, athletic guard who can affect the game a number of ways without scoring. Whitman is third on the team with 3.8 rebounds per game and has shown a real knack for hitting the offensive glass, leading the Bengals with 31 offensive rebounds. She’s also second on the team in blocks and fourth in steals.

“Even if I have the worst shooting game or the worst offensive game of my life, I have to rely on my defense and my effort,” Whitman said. “If I wasn’t stepping up on offense, I knew that I had to step up on defense, switch what I was going to focus on if I wasn’t doing so well on the offensive end.”

On offense, Sobolewski said he wasn’t sure how Whitman’s shot would look when she came in, but she’s hit over 30% of her 3s. She’s also kept her assist-to-turnover above 1.0, which is impressive for a freshman (among ISU players who play at least 12 minutes per game, only Dora Goles and the injured Ors have an ATO ratio above 1.0).

She may never be the focal point of the offense — at least not this year — but Whitman, who’s already shown her offensive potential with a 20-point game against Cal Baptist, fits in perfectly at the fringes of ISU’s attack, getting her buckets by being smart, converting putbacks and running the floor.

Add that to her ballhandling, defense and rebounding, and Whitman is about as well-rounded a freshman as ISU could hope for.

More than her basketball skills, her confidence has carried her though.

“For me, it’s a trust thing,” Whitman said. “I know that (Sobolewski) trusts me enough to put me out there on the court. So when I get out there, if I make a mistake, I know that he has faith in me that I will get back on defense ... and hustle hard enough to make a play or do something that will help the team out. And even if I don’t, to be there for my teammates.”