Nikki McCray-Penson, a two-time Olympic gold medalist basketball player, has died at age 51.
Rutgers, where McCray-Penson was an assistant coach, confirmed her death. A cause was not given.
McCray-Penson was on gold-medal teams at the Olympics in 1996 and 2000 and world championship in 1998.
While at the University of Tennessee, she made the national team and developed a reputation as a defensive stopper.
In a world championship qualifying tournament in 1993, future Hall of Famer Hortencia scored 37 points as Brazil beat the U.S. in a preliminary game.
Coach Tara VanDerveer then called on the 21-year-old McCray-Penson to defend Hortencia in the final. She limited Hortencia to two points (the Brazilian scored 15 overall) as the U.S. won.
“I think that earned her a spot on the Olympic team,” Pat Summitt, her coach at Tennessee, said, according to the Washington Post in 1998.
McCray-Penson was the sixth woman on the 1996 Olympic team, then the starting shooting guard at the 2000 Sydney Games.
After making three All-Star teams as a WNBA player, she retired and went into coaching. She was an assistant for Olympic teammate Dawn Staley at South Carolina from 2008-17, then was a head coach at Old Dominion and at Mississippi State, stepping down from the latter post after one season for health reasons. Last year was her first season at Rutgers.
McCray-Penson was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2013.
NBC Olympic research contributed to this report.
