Blogs > Elm City to Eagleville

A blog on UConn women's basketball.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

A bit of this, a bunch of that

After spending some time with UConn's Tina Charles and Kalana Greene at Gampel Pavilion this morning, there's no lack of subjects to cover.

Leading the list is Charles addressing the health of teammate Maya Moore, who missed the World University Games with a sprained knee.

"It was kind of emotional for me just hearing her on the sidelines just saying ‘TC do this’ and ‘post up harder,’" said Charles, the leading scorer and rebounder on the gold-medal winning U.S. squad. "We were playing against Poland and they were the only (team) that gave us a little bit of a scare, them and Russia. I know there were game situations where she could just come down and shoot a 3 and get us out of that drought we were in. She handled it in stride, she is going to rehab it well.

"Just playing with Maya, any time she goes down and whoever is on the floor will huddle around her and she said ‘guys, I am going to get up in five seconds.’ She would pop up and the crowd would all be clapping. When she went down, she didn’t get up that quick. I was on the bench at that time and popped up. I was getting nervous a little bit.

"Tiffany and I were really concerned. A lot of my teammates were rallying around her, we were praying. Just the fact that everything is turning out positive, I am really happy."

Charles also spoke of a less than welcoming response from Serbian fans when the U.S. team went to watch the U.S. men's team play against Serbia in the World University Games.

"It was pretty overwhelming. A lot of the people there were still stuck on the fact that we had bombed them in 1999. Just the fact that they had to walk by the buildings we bombed in 1999, they still hold a little grudge about it. I was able to take a tour and see the memorial for the kids that we had killed, the village was.

"We went to see our men play against Serbia. There were like 10,000 fans and just us 50 USA athletes right behind the bench," Charles said. "As soon as Serbia would score, you would talk about Serbia (fans) showing the middle finger to us, saying all these crazy things to us. Once you get to talk to them, you tell them it (the bombing of Serbia and Yugoslavia in 1999 as part of Operation Noble Anvil) was the past and I was 9/10 years old and I didn’t even know what happened until I got there. They just let it go and they were really nice people."

Greene has stayed up at UConn and worked on her mid-range offensive game as well as her 3-point shot. Rather than start graduate school, she is leaning towards adding a second major (political science) to the urban studies major she has completed. With former roommate Renee Montgomery now in the WNBA, Greene was uncertain who she would be living with but thought it would be Cassie Kerns, Tiffany Hayes and Caroline Doty.

She also spoke of a joke she played on her mom. On the morning of graduation (of which Greene was not taking part in) she called her mother to ask why she wasn't there to see her receive her degree.

"I kind of tricked my mom," Greene said. "I said ‘yo, where are you?’ She said ‘what are you talking about?’ I said 'I am about to go the gym (for graduation).' She said ‘you are not serious?’"

Greene admitted her mom fell for it and was a little annoyed when Kalana told her it was just a joke.

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