Clare & Jillian enjoy a cuppa

The Tall Ferns may not have the greatest women's basketball team in the world, but they will have their own Olympic barista who expects to serve up to 500 cups of coffee a day in Beijing.

Will that give the Kiwis a leading edge?

Not for Clare and Jillian -- they both are partial to a cuppa, but Clare refrains before a game, and Jillian prefers tea.

Read more ...

Not this time for Candice

The final three members of the U.S. women's Olympic basketball team were announced yesterday by everyone except USA Basketball, which finally did that this morning. They are Tamika Catchings, Kara Lawson and DeLisha Milton-Jones. Candice will have to wait until 2012 to be an Olympian.

Here is the official announcement and the complete roster.

Clare & Jillian will be Stanford's 3rd & 4th Olympians

There were no box scores published during the Beijing Good Luck Tournament, so we had little idea of how Jillian was doing and none at all about Clare.

Information about their performance during the tournament has now been published, and it's very impressive.  Jillian averaged 11.7 points and 6.3 rebounds per game. Clare, who started all six games, scored 5.7 points and 1.7 rebounds per game and hit 50% of her 3-point attempts.

No wonder they were named to the New Zealand Olympic team  yesterday!  They'll be the 3rd & 4th Olympic players in Stanford Women's Basketball history. Read more...

Clare & Jillian on NZ Olympic team

The New Zealand Olympic committee named the Tall Ferns Olympic team today for Beijing 2008, and both Clare and Jillian made the final cut! Here's the full story and a brief report from Radio New Zealand that highlights Clare and Jillian. The team faces a really tough Olympic schedule. Only their first game should be an easy one -- against Mali on August 9. Then they will play Spain, China, Czech Republic and the USA. Before that the Ferns are playing a "domestic series" in July (no details published) and an unspecified pre-Olympic tournament in China

Hot shots, secret weapons, dinkum kiwis ...

In anticipation of the announcement of the Kiwi Olympic team on Monday,  New Zealand TV3 introduced Stanford University hotshots Clare and Jillian with this story and video.

Clare & Jillian competing for spot on Olympic team

Clare and Jillian are on the 14-member squad of Tall Ferns that are competing for the 12 places on the Olympic team. The squad is being evaluated this weekend during a three-day camp in Christchurch. Read more...

Jillian's chances are good, according to this article.