Lady Griz Orientation :: MJ Bruno

The tattoos? They combine to tell the story of MJ Bruno, reminders to herself of what's truly important, but to the uninitiated, they are merely chapter titles, hints, clues that invite you to learn more, to dig deeper, to discover what lies beneath the surface and the ink.

She opens her right forearm. A cross. The Hebrew word Emunah. Joshua 1:9. And what does that have to do with basketball? Not a lot, but she wouldn't be in her first week as a Lady Griz, after two seasons at the University of Portland, unless their meaning was a more powerful force in her life than a game.

She tilts her head away from you, pulls back some hair to reveal a spot behind her left ear. Are those the wings of an angel or are they the symbol for a fighter pilot? Both, in this case. Below them, the letters ADB, the initials of her dad, Andrew D. Bruno.

She never knew him, killed in a plane accident in Mississippi when she was just shy of her third birthday, when her sister, Alivia, was just 11 days old. But he carries on, lives on, in his firstborn, daughter mirroring father, the power of genetics.

"He was fun, light-hearted, lived life full, loved people, brought a lot of joy to people's lives. Perfect description of MJ," says her mom, Holly Haneke, who played basketball at Gonzaga, where she met the soccer-playing Andrew. "She is his mini-me in a female version."

Pity those poor friends of MJ's, who later on would learn of her father's story, then refer to Mat Haneke as her stepdad, like he was some sort of fill-in or replacement part. When someone is bubbling with life 99 percent of the time, the withering glare of that one percent can melt anything in its path.

Don't ever call him that, she'd bite back. He's my dad. "He's been her dad her whole life. Her heart and love for him is so strong," says Holly. "Her heart is just as big and full for him as it was for her own dad. He's been a huge blessing in our lives. The girls just adore him."

The new union led to KJ Haneke, the family's third daughter, which shouldn't be confused with MJ, who will wear No. 23 for Montana, but it's not what you might be thinking. Please, she begs you, don't expect her to be anything like that MJ, despite the coincidences of letters and numbers.

She's Madilynn Jean, or MADILYNN JEAN! when her mom has a point to drive home, or was until the third grade when a coach on a soccer field in Spokane would yell "Maddie!" and seemingly half a dozen ponytailed girls from the same team would stop in their tracks and look his way.

Okay, from now on, you're MJ, he told her. And it's been that way ever since.

The uniform number 23? That's no homage to the other MJ, instead to her mom, who wore 21 for the Bulldogs, back when they were, eh, not what they are now.

She was honorable mention All-West Coast Conference as a sophomore, Academic All-WCC as a junior, then had to retire before her senior season because of a heath issue, leaving her to help out however she could in 2000-01, the first year of what would be the highly successful Kelly Graves era.

When she committed to Montana earlier this spring, MJ inquired about No. 21, only to discover it's been retired. How about 22, the number she wore at Portland, her mom's high school number? Yeah, that's Gina Marxen's number. Okay, so 23 it is. That will have to do.

But she's got some MJ in her, the other MJ, Michael Jordan, if not in pure talent then in competitiveness. That's why she's here, from Montana's perspective and area of need.

Because who can forget the Idaho State game at Dahlberg Arena in February, the one Montana led 46-37 early in the fourth quarter, the Lady Griz against the team they defeated in Pocatello a month earlier?

In retrospect, all it would have taken was a single stop over the final eight minutes. Instead, Montana had no answer for Callie Bourne, who took over the game and led the Bengals to a shocking 55-54 win. The difference wasn't talent. Montana had more. The difference was tenacity.

Bourne decided she wasn't going to be stopped and Montana had no one who could offer up the right level of resistance, no one who was willing to say, yeah, that's not happening. Welcome, MJ!

After Bruno's first offseason practice as a Lady Griz on Monday, Carmen Gfeller, who knows what college basketball is all about, now entering her sixth year, spotlighted her new teammate, called her a dog in the most complimentary way possible, athlete recognizing athlete.

"That's probably the biggest area of improvement that our entire team needs from last year to this year, having that mentality," said Gfeller.

Bruno literally changes a game's mathematics. What used to be considered 50-50 balls are now 60-40 in favor of Montana. She's that much of a difference-maker. In that split second, when the other nine players on the court are deciding what to do, Bruno has already acted. She tilts the court.

"Nothing is left to chance," said Gfeller. "MJ gets her hands on everything. She is going to make everyone around her better. She forces you to change your perspective about how hard you're competing. If she's doing it, why can't I do that? It's a trickle-down effect."

That's the MJ in MJ. If you don't want to play that way, don't play that way. "I could ease up, but I'm not going to," she says. "I'm here to work hard."

That's why she wears knee pads. And wears them out. And can wear out teammates, unless they are the right kind of teammates, who want to go hard every minute, who want to improve every day. Montana had those players last season but needed someone, a peer, to set the standard.

Too often it was the coaching staff pushing them along, the male practice players upping the intensity in practice. When it's a teammate? That's the good stuff, that's what was missing.

Montana had five players who scored 20 or more points in a game last season. Four are returning. That's not what was going to hold the Lady Griz back. You don't want 14 MJs on the team but one might make all the difference.

"I love defense. I love getting after people. I don't know what it is about it, it gets me jacked," Bruno says. "That's just my mindset. I don't want to let you score. I want to outwork you."

(We take a short break to allow coach Brian Holsinger's goosebumps to settle back down.)

Her arrival is compound interest for a team that was improving in simple-interest terms last season. Bruno will force you to be better today and make you bring it at an even higher level starting tomorrow. And the arc on that graph is skyrocketing by March, heading off the charts.

"Sometimes it just takes two people getting after it. Okay, they brought the energy, I need to bring it too," she says. "That's when everybody starts being at their best.

"This team wants to be a championship team. I've been a part of one. I want to be on another one, and I'll have to do whatever I have to do to get us there. When everybody buys into that, you're going up and up because you're getting better every day."

But what about Andrew's influence? You know, fun, light-hearted, loved people? That's not the MJ Way, at least the other MJ. But this MJ is here for all of it.

"She has this magnetic personality," says Holsinger. "When she came on her visit, our girls loved her. They voiced more about who she is and how fun she is to be around than any kid we've had visit."

Gfeller adds, "It's the best of both worlds. She's tough on the court and has your back off it. She is a super tough competitor but she is going to be hyping you up and the first to give out high-fives. She is the full package."

Now we're starting to see Andrew, who lived in both Costa Rica and Guatemala growing up, the son of missionaries, who learned to follow his passions and then wore them on his sleeve, particularly his faith.

Either through nature or nurture, he developed into an 8 on the Enneagram scale, The Challenger, someone who sees themselves as strong and powerful and stands up for what they believe in, who wants to be in control of their environment. (See: MJ on the basketball court.)

So how could a girl resist, when this guy who played soccer at Whitworth and later two seasons at Gonzaga, rolled into Spokane, sharing her faith and sweeping her off her feet?

"One of the biggest things was his faith, the importance of our faith and sharing that together," Holly says. "And he was fun and goofy. I loved it. Everybody called him Crazy Andy in my family."

They graduated, raised their hands to answer a need and were off to the Dominican Republic to work with children in Haitian migrant camps, Andrew with one eye on the kids, one on the sky where the missionary pilots were living out his childhood dream of being behind the controls of an aircraft.

And then the events of 9/11 took place, which served as a siren song for an 8. When he heard that the Marine Corps was recruiting potential pilots, he meshed his dream of flying with his internal call to stand up for justice and headed to Virginia for Officer Candidate School.

It's why her birth certificate claims MJ as a Virginian, which is where she was born before it was off to Pensacola, Florida, for flight school, then Meridian Naval Air Station in Mississippi for more training.

It was there, at church, through its adopt-a-military-family program, that the Brunos were paired up with the Twentes, who lived next to an airstrip and whose patriarch, George, shared Andy Bruno's love of flying and owned his own aircraft.

Alivia was born on February 1, 2005, prompting a visit from Andy's parents to celebrate the arrival. On the 12th, Andy and George went out in the latter's bi-wing aerobatic plane, the extended Bruno family along to join up with the Twentes.

The FAA report determined it was a cable rudder that broke during one of the plane's maneuvers, sending it crashing to earth. Andy Bruno was days away from being sent to sea to learn how to take off and land a fighter jet from an aircraft carrier.

"Awful experience," says Holly. "His parents were there. We were all there. It's something you read about in a book. You don't wish it on anybody in their life."

MJ doesn't know him except through photos and stories. And every time she looks in the mirror. "Personality-wise, my mom says I'm a spitting image of my dad," she says. "That's pretty cool. It means a lot to me just because I don't have any memories because I was so little."

It's why she added the tattoo, to have something even more permanent. She got it in The Islands when she was a freshman at Portland, the Pilots there to play in the Bank of Hawaii Classic. "Neat to know I still have a part of him with me. Makes me think about my dad, which I like," she says.

The Brunos, Holly, Madilynn and Alivia, eventually relocated to Spokane to be closer to family, a larger support system. It's where they returned to as normal a life as they could make it, which meant youth sports for the oldest when she was of age.

And wouldn't you know it: Andy's characteristics shone right through. "She had a natural knack for defense, even when she was young," says Holly.

"She was one of the smallest kids but not afraid to guard the big kid. She wasn't afraid of it. That was natural to her. She's always been crazily aggressive. It's hard to teach that. She naturally had that."

An 8, just like Andy. A justice guy, his justice daughter, whose own dream is to end up in the FBI to aid in the fight against sex trafficking, something Holly has worked with and has taught her girls about.

Now, about that other tattoo. The cross, Emunah, the Hebrew word for faith, Joshua 1:9. Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid, do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.

Like most kids, she was still riding on her parents' faith coattails as she grew up, believing things but never truly embracing that belief, internalizing it, personalizing it.

Her parents were the offensive linemen, clearing a path for their daughters to follow along safely behind them. But they could only go so far, do so much of the work. Once they neared the goal line, the girls had to make the final push themselves, to find the end zone on their own, to claim the victory.

For MJ Bruno, it was COVID that got her there. "I had no peace and felt fearful my senior year. I really struggled," she says.

"God was what brought me peace. Reading the Bible, spending time with Him, worshiping Him. I'd never felt that kind of love and peace in my life. That's when it became real for me."

All she had to do was step back and see what had become of her family, what had emerged after disaster. Loving parents, three happy, healthy daughters.

"Just seeing how He's taken care of my family. He blessed me and my sister and my mom. I grew up with an awesome dad and got a little sister out of it," she says.

"I could have not had any of this, but He provided for me and my family. Cool to see how faithful He's been to my family. That for me was, I'm all in. I'm sold. He's taken me this far. I wouldn't want to trade life without Him. It's not something I'm willing to sacrifice or give up."

She took that fire of her faith to Portland and became a Pilot and wouldn't you know she was immediately tested.

All any freshman, in one of the most challenging periods of their lives, wants to do is make a strong first impression, prove to everyone, the returners, their fellow newcomers and to the coaches, that she belongs, that she was recruited for a reason.

During summer conditioning on campus, before her freshman season, Bruno, who's been active her entire life, started to lose feeling in her legs. And it wasn't like she was doing anything she hadn't done hundreds if not thousands of times before. Then the numbness turned to jolts of pain with each step.

What in the world? It was equal parts bizarre and terrifying, not so much the medical side but the athlete's fear of having to admit: I don't think I can do this. My body isn't doing what it's been trained to do. When that athlete is a first-month freshman, the angst multiplies.

And then the back pain settled in.

She talked to the trainer but mostly kept it to herself. It will go away. I'll work my way through it. It's not a big deal. "As a freshman, you're trying to prove yourself, so I just pushed through it," she says. "I didn't want to give them any chance for me not to play."

By the fall she couldn't bend over to tie her shoes. Then she couldn't walk. Finally, she couldn't get out of bed. That's when she opened up, told everyone what was going on, allowed herself to be vulnerable, convinced herself she wasn't being weak, admitted she needed help.

An x-ray was scheduled. They told her: you've had stress fractures for a while. Because they didn't heal, they broke off and your ligaments are no longer attached to your vertebrae and it shifted. Oh, and you have a bulging disk.

"Welcome to college, your back is broken for the rest of your life. Basically, they said I had to find ways to work around it. That was fun," she says.

Medically speaking, she has spondylosis. Sure, she could get it set back into place and fortified with metal plates and pins, but there are no guarantees it would alleviate the pain, and the resulting rebuild and potential residual damage might hinder her from ever playing basketball again.

There is no Plan A, Plan B or Plan C, in descending order of happy endings. Nothing was appealing. That's the nature of back injuries. For the most part, life will never be the same again. So it is for MJ Bruno, who was told by her doctor, if you can still play with tolerable pain, that's what you have to do.

She had her best game as a freshman against San Francisco, finishing with nine points, seven rebounds and three assists in 25 minutes. Two days later, at the game-day shoot-around at Santa Clara, she rose up for a jump shot, landed and crumpled to the floor.

Her season was over, weeks before Portland would advance to the WNIT.

That summer, last summer, she spent time with a doctor in Spokane who helped bring some clarity to the situation. She had the same issue Steve Nash did while he played in the NBA. It would be a matter of prioritizing practices and games and managing the other demands, particularly lifting and conditioning.

She couldn't do everything she wanted to do, but she could still do the most important things if she was smart about it.

If she did that AND she communicated her needs with her coaches and trainers – no easy task but she now knew the consequences of remaining silent – she could continue to play basketball the remainder of her collegiate career.

Last season: As good as it could be, from start to finish. The Pilots went 15-3 in the WCC to finish second behind Gonzaga, the team Portland would face in the tournament championship game in March in Las Vegas, the team that defeated the Pilots twice during the regular season, though both in tight games.

The title game was more of the same. Halftime: Gonzaga 33, Portland 22. Nothing to see here, just the favorite doing its thing. It was enough of a done deal that the WCC staff moved all the championship gear, hats and t-shirts, to the Bulldog locker room.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the expected coronation. Portland outscored Gonzaga 26-13 in the third quarter, then made the plays in the fourth to hold on for a 64-60 victory. The Pilots were going to the NCAA Tournament.

"I think they thought they already had the game won at halftime, but we just kept grinding. We just didn't give up, kept working. We smacked them in the face and they weren't ready to respond," Bruno says.

The team traveled to Los Angeles and UCLA's campus for a first-round game against Oklahoma, which the Pilots lost.

Now it was MJ Bruno's time. She had been the only underclassmen in the regular rotation. She was in line to be a starter as a junior and she was a no-brainer as choice for captain. It's what an underclassman works for, to enjoy the fruits of being an upperclassman.

But something was off in her faith life. The fire still burned, but it's hard to keep it blazing on your own, to provide your own fuel time and time again. She found a church but missed service more often than she was able to attend. She sought community on campus but mostly came up empty-handed.

Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid, do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go. It wasn't just a tattoo. It was a directive.

"I just felt a big tug on my heart. I couldn't do faith on my own anymore. I wasn't willing to sacrifice my faith for basketball," she says. "I sacrificed it for two years. I was not willing to sacrifice it anymore."

Faith? She took a full leap of it when she opted to put her name in the transfer portal. She had a good thing going basketball-wise at Portland, and not a lot of coaches are going to be reaching out to a defensive-minded player who averaged 3.2 points and 2.3 rebounds as a sophomore.

What the portal couldn't show was her conviction. This wasn't a basketball move. If she found her major (social work) and the right situation for her faith life, she would take whatever basketball came with it, wherever that might be, whatever level that might be.

"If I'm hitting two out of the three, that's awesome, and if basketball is good, that's great," she says.

When the name MJ Bruno popped up in the transfer portal, which the Lady Griz coaches were monitoring daily after the season, Holsinger recognized it immediately.

His wife, Stacey, was high school classmates with the then Holly Turner in Spokane, and she played soccer at Gonzaga when Holly and Andy were the campus's It couple.

And he knew how MJ Bruno played and competed, something that found a sensitive spot after his team lost to Eastern Washington in the quarterfinals of the Big Sky tournament in Boise in March, mostly because the Lady Griz could not get defensive stops in the second half when they needed them.

Of course, he had the same question every other college coach had when they reached out to Bruno: Why? The team was successful. She wasn't lacking opportunity to contribute. "Brian even asked, I don't get it. Why are you leaving? It doesn't make sense," says Bruno.

"It just wasn't worth it. We won the championship but I wasn't in a good head space. I didn't have anyone speaking life into me. It wasn't the place I could be the best version of myself and the healthiest version of myself."

She visited campus in April. Both sides knew this was win-win.

"We have a lot of talented offensive players on our team," said Holsinger. "She does something unique. The loose balls, the offensive rebounds, the defensive stop when you need one. Those things win championships.

"Her mentality and how hard she plays, her enthusiasm, how she talks and high-fives, it's unique and something we were missing last season. She's a winner. I couldn't be happier we get two years with her. She'll impact our team on the court and off."

As for Bruno? She didn't sit for a recruiting pitch. She had questions she needed to have answered, questions that might be discomfiting for certain coaches. "I was willing to ask those questions because I had to find the best fit for me. Hey, this is it, this is me, this is what I'm looking for," she says.

What do you have on campus? Is there an active Fellowship of Christian Athletes within the department? How about the team?

"My mom knew Stacey, so I was comfortable having that conversation with him. It's nice to know your coach has those same beliefs and they are important to him," she says.

"It's still scary. You don't know if you're going to get picked up or where you're going to land. (When I committed) I felt a big sense of peace in my soul. Such a great fit for me."

Her faith community? It's now starts under the same roof, within the apartment she's sharing with Libby Stump and Haley Huard, neither of whom owns a bushel basket or would use it if they did. Even when the switch gets hit at the end of the night, the light still shines brightly through the drawn shades.

Some people are like that. And that's all MJ Bruno ever wanted. "I felt like God really blessed me in taking that leap of faith," she says. "I've only been here a week but already feel right at home and where I'm supposed to be."

And you wouldn't know any of this by attending a Lady Griz morning practice. She goes harder than you'd imagine given the state of her back. And if she's defending Stump, the girl is getting nothing. No looks, no space to dribble and operate. And it will make both of them better in the long run.

It's what Bruno wants out of life, whether that be her faith or basketball. Let's work hard to make each other better, together. The end result will be well worth it.

University of Montana Athletics

Players Mentioned

Carmen Gfeller

Haley Huard

Gina Marxen

Libby Stump

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