Wild roller-coaster ride for Hawai'i's Greeny
By Ann Miller
Advertiser Staff Writer
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| The two positions Karena Greeny has not played at UH are center and point guard.
Advertiser library photo • Jan. 26, 2002 |
"She's got a side comment for everything," freshman Jade Abele says. "Karena is so fast with the one-liners, and it's so hard to think of a comeback. Ten minutes later you think of a good one and she just starts in again. No one can keep up."
In her final season, Greeny's basketball has caught up to her biting sense of humor. She and Janka Gabrielova play their aloha game tonight when Hawai'i (20-6, 13-4) meets Boise State (9-18, 5-12) at Stan Sheriff Center. In Greeny's case, the journey and the destination have been incredibly enlightening.
Her Manoa sojourn began with a red-shirt season. A promising freshman year was followed by a sophomore that promised nothing. She found her way back, started the first five games of her junior year, then lost her position to eventual WAC Freshman of the Year April Atuaia.
Four months ago UH coach Vince Goo was still not convinced Greeny, with her self-deprecating sense of humor, had the confidence needed to play to her potential. Her teammates had no such doubts, voting her captain in a show of support that was precisely what she needed.
"To think your teammates see something else in you ... some qualities I have to offer," said Greeny. "It's flattering to have them see something that I personally don't see."
But now, after four years of playing behind people like All-Americans Nani Cockett and Raylene Howard, Greeny is living large. Her numbers are up in every meaningful statistic. Ironically, after such a patient wait, she also leads the team in minutes per game.
In the past 10 games those numbers — other than minutes per game — are up 25 percent. Greeny is closing with a senior flourish reminiscent of the likes of Crystal Lee and Tania Brunton. Improbably, for a player much more comfortable pounding the ball inside, she also leads the WAC with an outrageous .564 shooting percentage from 3-point range.
Goo is surprised only by Greeny's long-range bombing. He saw the rest when he first watched her play with a Washington all-star team in 1996.
"She was quiet, a hard worker," Goo recalled. "She just got up there and played hard every game. We must have seen her play 10 games."
He came home convinced he wanted Greeny here, for her work ethic as well as her ballhandling skills and brute strength, a rare combination that encouraged him to coin an original hoops term: "Power point guard."
It describes her to the tips of her dyed-red hair, though the only two positions she has not played here are center and point guard.
Greeny's athletic career started at the age of 9 when she began throwing discus, shot put and javelin because her father didn't want her to play baseball. Serious soccer and basketball came much later, as did scholarship offers in all three sports. Between the three, and competing against a brother who is 6 foot 7 and played minor league baseball at the Double-A level, she acquired exceptional strength.
"She's an athlete," sophomore Christa Brossman says. "She does all the little things and she is so strong. You would never think she could be a wing, never think she could be a basketball player. But in the post I can't defend her because is so much stronger than I am.
"She may not excel in one area more than another, but she's got all the pieces of the game."
She's put it together this season with a style all her own: "Non-glare, non-glitter, non-flash, but she produces," is how Goo describes it.
Greeny eventually trusted Goo's instincts and came to Hawai'i, though clearly she had her doubts during the five years she's been here.
That was most apparent three years ago, when her grades took a dive the first semester. Goo told her point-blank that she wouldn't travel until they improved and she didn't, playing just 10 games as a sophomore. By the end of the second semester, her grades were back to better than respectable.
"I didn't realize how far off-track I had got until the coach said you're not coming back unless we see some changes in you," recalls Greeny, who said personal problems led to her slide. "Then the light bulb goes on. I decided to change. It (the slide) was so out of character after my freshman year that it was not hard to go back."
Through it all, Greeny's good nature never wavered. She now calls herself a "prime example" of Goo's program because she's been through good and bad, and discovered she was never alone.
"I've figured out now that the coaches are here to help us, not just to coach us," Greeny says. "In my fifth year, I figured out they're my family here, for all the kids from the Mainland. They're all we've got along with our teammates."
Her teammates are universally happy Greeny has been here for them.
"She's brought laughter and joy," Brossman says.
"A smile, always," Christen Roper says. "It's just fun to be around her."
"We really treasure her leadership," adds Abele.
Apparently, that quality is obvious to everyone but Greeny. Even Denise Takashima, one of UH's most rabid boosters, senses the Greeny mystique.
"What I'll miss most," Takashima says, "is that she has faith in all her teammates. She is such a good team player.That's why they all really enjoy her."
