The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Nurse thrilled to play in front of friends and family
Huskies taking on Duquesne in Toronto today
STORRS — All Kia Nurse could do was chuckle the first time she heard that fellow Ontario basketball prodigy Cheyenne Creighton referred to the UConn senior guard as “the face of women’s basketball back home in Ontario.”
Creighton certainly would be somebody who knows a thing or two about Nurse’s rise to prominence. Memphis’ leading scorer is fighting with the UConn senior guard for the title of the top-scoring Canadian in the American Athletic Conference. Creighton was Nurse’s on teams in Ontario dating back to when they were in the seventh grade.
Creighton is among those pretty fired up about Friday’s game at the Mattamy Athletic Centre in Toronto, where Nurse will lead top-ranked UConn against Duquesne (7 p.m., SNY).
“I always get such a warm welcome, it’s essentially a hotbed for basketball in Ontario and to me so many people had a hand in how I got here today,” Nurse said. “You played every single person in your city, every single person in your high school, you went out and played them again so everybody kind of knows everybody. So to go home, kind of see everybody again and be back, it’s important. I’m beyond excited for that. People keep telling me how excited they are.”
Nurse is no stranger to playing in the former home of the NHL’s Toronto Maple Leafs. It was the site of the 2015 Pan Am Games when Nurse torched a U.S. team featuring UConn stars Breanna Stewart and Moriah Jefferson to the tune of 33 points in the historic 81-73 victory. That squad became the first basketball team from Canada to win a gold medal at the Pan Am Games.
With the game not only being held in Canada but also being televised nationally, those who had never seen the fiery Hamilton, Ontario, native in action suddenly caught the rising star in the Canadian women’s program putting on a show.
Nurse, who was stunned to be asked to be Canada’s flag bearer for the Pan Am closing ceremonies, began to notice a few second glances when she returned home.
“After Pan Ams, that was
when I had to get used to it,” Nurse said. “For me, it’s, ‘OK, now you have this platform, and what can you do to make a difference in the world, make a difference in women’s basketball in Canada?’ That’s when I’m really fortunate and really excited to try to make waves over there for a lot of the young girls that come up.”
The athletic achievements of Nurse’s family have been well documented. Her father, Richard, played in the Canadian Football League; her brother Darnell is enjoying a breakthrough season with the NHL’s Edmonton Oilers and her cousin Sarah is a candidate to make the Canadian Olympic women’s hockey team. One of her aunts played basketball at Syracuse, and Canadian women’s national team coach Lisa Thomaidis said Nurse’s mother might be the toughest of the bunch.
However, when she started to play basketball, she never thought about playing in the Olympics or leading Canada to gold medals.
“When I started playing I just wanted to be my sister (Tamika); she was the biggest and brightest star in the world,” Nurse said. “We didn’t have the social media so we could see people like Maya Moore’s Twitter feeds or any of that kind of stuff. When she started playing for the national team, I just wanted to be absolutely everything that she was. It took a while but I got there.”
If there is a down side to her homecoming game it is that fellow Hamilton native Halle Bovell is not playing this season for Duquesne. Still, Nurse is expecting quite the scene when she plays in Canada for the first time in her collegiate career.
“Canadians, they bring some real fire to the atmosphere. For me personally I’m beyond excited and fortunate for the coaches to have gone out of their way to make this opportunity happen,” Nurse said. “I know Canada basketball, I know the officials there are extremely excited to get some stuff going, to be there, to be out in full force