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Tiana Mangakahia lit up the women’s basketball world.
I’m talking about BOTH her personality and her play on the court.
She could have been in the WNBA playoffs right now, competing for one of the teams vying for a championship. Maybe she would have the regular-season assists crown instead of Alyssa Thomas. It’s within the realm of possibility; she seemed to be on track to be the game’s next high-volume distributor after averaging 9.8 in her first season at Syracuse. She finished her Orange career fifth in assists per game in Division I history with 8.7, more than Courtney Vandersloot tallied at Gonzaga (8.2). She could have filled Sloot’s shoes in the W.
If it wasn’t for cancer.
Every once in a while you see a tweet about a recent college player passing, and it’s always hard to wrap your mind around someone dying so young. All of these losses are equally tragic. But with some of the higher-profile players, like Tiana, we felt like we knew them. So through her story we are reminded of that special spark that exists in all these youth, a spark that transcends their death by unfailingly lifting up the world even after they’re gone.
Tiana’s spark is captured in her vlog, through which she gave fans an inside look at her life. She was so close to her family: her mom, dad and five brothers (four older, one younger). One of the first videos on her vlog shows a competition between her mom and dad where they answer questions about her to test who knows her better. It’s full of laughs, and you can see her dad’s humor and her mom’s caring spirit lighting up her world, just as she lit up theirs with her outgoingness and kindness.
When Tiana went through chemo, all of her brothers shaved their heads in solidarity. Her four older brothers got her into basketball. In her vlog, Tiana refers to her siblings with the utmost love and appreciation. Family was everything to her. She wanted to get married, have lots of kids and never get divorced, following in her parents’ footsteps.
Tiana also had incredibly strong bonds with her friends, from her home country of Australia to Hutchinson Community College in Kansas to ‘Cuse. During the darkest times of the battle against cancer she had friends in teammate and now-WNBA player Emily Engstler and Syracuse women’s basketball sports information director Olivia Coiro who would come over and, as Tiana put it, “just listen to (her) cry.” She loved Syracuse, saying she wouldn’t change going there for the world and feeling “grateful” and “blessed” to have the opportunity to play there. She loved Australia and was appreciative of her ties to New Zealand, where her dad is originally from.
After conquering cancer the first time, she returned to the basketball court. Though the medication she was on made it hard for her to be quite as good as before, and though she didn’t make a WNBA opening-day roster in 2021, she led the nation in assists per game in her first season back and went on to have a successful career overseas in Australia, Russia and France. The cancer came back and she retired, only to come out of retirement while still going through treatment. She played right up until her health took a serious hit this month. She was tough—to the utmost. And she loved the game.
Tiana reached her college career-high of 44 points twice; it’s one off the Syracuse program record. She set the single-game record for assists with a whopping 17. Her favorite basketball memory was hitting an acrobatic game-winning layup at the buzzer as part of 11 overtime points against DePaul. She holds the program records for assists (736; in just three seasons), assist percentage (52.8), assists per game and free throw percentage (87.3). In addition, her 17.5 points and 2.5 steals per game in 2017-18 both rank seventh in Syracuse single-season history. Let us never forget just how good she was. She has a case to be considered the Orange’s GOAT.
Tiana passed away on Sept. 11 at age 30. In the days since she has received nothing but love from every person whose life she touched. Like I said, it felt like we knew her. If you covered NCAA women’s basketball any time between 2017 and 2021, she was a household name. Now there’s a hole in everyone’s hearts—one that will be filled in time as we sift through the memories.
Memories immortalized on YouTube, such as the one of a girl filming a mukbang in her car as autumn shifted to winter in Australia in 2020. Cancer was, for the moment, defeated, and she answered questions about basketball, as well as her romantic life, dreaming of one day giving all her love to a husband. What we’ll realize in watching these moments back is that she did give all her love—to the world.
She was a bright light, a larger-than-life inspiration because of what she conquered.
And, man, was it fun to watch her play basketball.
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