From 1931 to 1935 DeJernett played for the integrated Indiana Central College team, now known as the University of Indianapolis Greyhounds, in the process adding to his cage celebrity by becoming Indiana's first black college basketball star. The 1934 Greyhounds went 16–1 and posted the state's top collegiate record. In DeJernett's final college season he captained the team and Ray Crowe joined the Greyhounds. Crowe considered DeJernett the hero of his youth. Crowe went on to coach Oscar Robertson and the Crispus Attucks team in Indianapolis. DeJernett's example extended to Ray Crowe's brother George, Indiana's first Mr. Basketball, and Robertson's brother Bailey both subsequently attending and starring for Indiana Central. Preferring to stay in school, DeJernett shunned offers to turn pro for the powerful New York Renaissance club in 1933. Given his career experience up to that point, he not surprisingly made his professional debut in 1935 for one of the first integrated barnstorming basketball teams in US history, the ICC AllStars which featured DeJernett's former coach Friddle (who had played professionally before returning to college) and a number of DeJernett's college and high school teammates. DeJernett conscientiously returned to school for a ninth semester before opting to sign with the Renaissance in January 1936. Big Dave joined fellow Indiana natives Roy Burris (Akron Firestones), Charles "Stretch" Murphy (Firestones), and John Wooden (Indianapolis Kautskys) amongst the earliest celebrated four-year collegiate stars to turn pro with a top-level professional club. Before DeJernett no African-American collegiate star had stayed in school for the now-traditional four years of college ball in advance of signing with a club of the calibre of the Rens. Examples like DeJernett's of staying in school rather than turning pro early eventually became the accepted practice for Afro-American collegians until the Spencer Haywood and Moses Malone "hardship"/highschool cases emerged in the American Basketball Association of the 1970s. After a season with the Rens DeJernett played from 1936 to 1941 for the Chicago Crusaders, an all-black barnstorming club whose history was closely related to the then-lesser-known Harlem Globetrotters. He also played for the Chicago Collegians during 1939–40. In the 1940–41 season the Crusaders (billed as the Savoy Big Five) entered into a player-exchange agreement with the Globetrotters.