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Isaac Brice will tell you he's just a southern boy from Picayune, Mississippi. He'll say, "yes ma'am" to everyone he meets, strike up a conversation with a stranger in the hallway and mean it when he asks how you're doing. That warmth isn't something he learned at Portland State, he brought it with him, but Portland State is where it found its purpose.

Brice came to PSU by way of Southwest Mississippi Community College and Iona University, arriving in Portland with a connection to the city already in place — his dad coached football at PSU in 2007 and 2008. When he entered the transfer portal, Portland State was the first program to reach out. While Portland was familiar, what he found when he got to PSU was something he hadn't experienced before.

"Coming from a place where people didn't care as much — I was a basketball player. I wasn't Isaac. I was just a player on the team," he says. "And here, I'm Isaac Brice."

What had seemed like manageable shoulder pain turned out to be a labrum tear, and what followed was not one surgery but three, including a nerve transfer procedure. For the entirety of last season, while his teammates won the Big Sky regular season championship, Brice watched from the sideline.

He did not go quiet. Instead he became the loudest voice on the bench, hyping up his fellow teammates and becoming a mentor and a leader for the younger guys on his team in the way you only can when you know exactly what it feels like to need someone to believe in you.

"I can't give my effort on the basketball court," he says. "So I have to double my effort on trying to be loud, trying to make sure everybody's awake and ready to go."

That same instinct carried him into PSU's Team Impact program, where he was paired with Lucas, a young man with special needs who became something closer to family than a program participant. He threw Lucas a signing day ceremony, attended his eighth grade graduation and plans to be at his Special Olympics track meet. When PSU won the championship and Lucas was in the stands, Brice joked with Lucas' mom that they'd only lost the two home games he hadn't attended.

"It just feels like what I'm supposed to do," he says. "I'm so blessed to be in this position. I don't see why I can't share that with him."

Brice is graduating with a B.A. in marketing marketing degree and heading into a master's program in Applied Data Science at PSU, steadily building toward a career he hopes will one day land him at Nike. He has a fifth year of eligibility ahead, a shoulder finally showing signs of recovery and a season he has been waiting to play. But before any of that, there is a stage to walk across to receive his diploma and knowing Brice, he'll find a way to make everyone around him feel like it's their moment too.