BALTIMORE, Md. — Steve Adams was all about effort on the basketball court.

The Butler graduate is one of only two players at Johns Hopkins University to ever amass more than 1,300 points and 600 rebounds for the Blue Jays.

A 2003 Hopkins graduate, Adams still holds school records of 20 rebounds and 23 free throw attempts in a game. He remains among the program’s top five all-time in scoring and rebounding.

He finished his collegiate career with 1,370 points and 645 rebounds.

“You could make the argument Steve is the greatest post player in Hopkins history,” Blue Jays coach Bill Nelson said.

He would know. Nelson has 470 wins in 29 years as the school’s men’s basketball coach and will be inducted along with Adams into the Johns Hopkins University Athletic Hall of Fame Saturday.

“Steve will be the seventh player I’ve had to get into the Hall of Fame and there’s probably four more who will follow,” Nelson said. “With 11 Hall of Famers, I better win a lot of games.”

Hopkins was 67-34 — 35-17 in the Centennial Conference — in Adams’ four years there. He was a three-year starter, made all-conference three times and all-region once.

He averaged 7.4 points per game coming off the bench as a freshman after scoring 951 points in his prep career at Butler.

“The hardest transition for me was playing basketball that freshman year in college,” Adams said. “You go from high school ball to playing against grown men at that point.

“We returned four starters from a conference championship team the year before and all of those guys were seniors. I was thrilled just to get on the floor.”

Now married, with two daughters and a third child on the way, Adams and his family lived in Italy from 2009-12 while he worked for the government. He is now a special agent with the FBI and works out of Pittsburgh.

“Nobody plays sports to become a professional in it,” Adams said. “The biggest thing about athletics for me was the relationships we built and learning how to work as a team. Those things have definitely benefitted me in my career.

“The guys I played with at Hopkins, we still get together at least once a year. We’re all spread out — Pittsburgh, Boston, Baltimore, New York, New Jersey — so we pick a spot that’s geographically good for everybody and meet up for a weekend. We cherish that.”

Adams played on talented Butler teams that reached the PIAA Western Finals and developed a tremendous rivalry with powerful New Castle.

“The team I stepped into my sophomore year was phenomenal,” he recalled. “We believed in ourselves. Self-confidence can take you a long way. I learned that, too.”

Nelson believed Adams could have played Division I college basketball. Bob McCone, his assistant coach at Hopkins for 25 years, knew then-Butler coach George Abraham through working camps with him.

“That’s how I found out about Steve,” Nelson said. “He was such a hard-nosed determined player. I think he could have played higher, but he used basketball to get an education.”

Adams said he was looking at Patriot League and Ivy League schools, Johns Hopkins and Carnegie Mellon when he was in high school.

“Education was the important part,” he said. “I was going to play basketball no matter where I went.”

At the time he graduated from Hopkins, Adams ranked fifth with a .583 career field goal percentage, first with 555 career free throw attempts and second with 368 free throws made.

“That guy wanted to get fouled. It was a mind-set,” Nelson said. “Steve was intent on scoring in a number of different ways. Completing three-point plays or going to the line was fine with him.

“When he had the ball in the low post, he was getting us points — simple as that.”

Looking back on his playing career, Adams expressed gratitude for his coaches.

“They all looked way beyond basketball,” he said. “I learned so much about life from those guys.

“Coach Nelson was all about us maturing as adults. He always emphasized ... two months after your last game here, you’re entering the real world. He helped get us ready for it.”