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| Tania (Brunton) Tupu |
"I didn't think I had time to give to international ball," she said. "One last shot at the Olympics kept me in the picture."
Her knees, somehow, have held up through a dozen years with New Zealand's national team and five college seasons in the United States. She red-shirted for UH in 1994-95, along with honorable mention All-American Nani Cockett, after both suffered season-ending injuries.
Hawai'i went a program-worst 6-20 that season. Cockett and Tupu lifted them to 23-6 and their first — and still only — conference tournament championship the following year.
It remains the most dramatic turnaround in NCAA women's basketball history. The program's first foreign player (Tupu is also half maori) led the team in scoring and rebounding and drove over anyone in her way.
"We had to tone her down a little," said recently retired UH coach Vince Goo. "She didn't have 12 fouls."
She does have 12 years of international basketball now.
"I certainly didn't think my knees would outlast Vince's career," Tupu said. "But I guess he wants to spend more time on the golf course."
Tupu said the difference in her game now is that she is "older, slower and smarter." The parts of her game that came from paradise are "persistence, drive and great manners."
New Zealand opens Saturday against Team USA, which hasn't lost an Olympic game since 1992. That doesn't scare Tupu, who scored New Zealand's first-ever Olympic points in Sydney.
After the Games, she expects basketball to be in her past, along with all the knee inflammation.
Notes
Kate McMeeken-Ruscoe, who played for Hawai'i in 1999 and 2000, was one of the final cuts for New Zealand. McMeeken-Ruscoe transferred to Buffalo, where she was the team's most valuable player and captain as a senior. She graduated No. 1 in the school of management.