BUFFALO, N.Y. - When Buffalo women's basketball needed more players, they went searching almost as far as you can go from Western New York. Assistant coach Cherie Cordoba went home to her native Australian and recruited Katherine and Liisa Ups, identical twin sisters, to play for the Bulls. Before playing at UB, the Ups sisters had never left Australia. They adjusted well to the U.S., but there were some major cultural differences they noticed immediately.

"We stopped at a gas station and the first thing we saw was 99-cent jumbo sodas," Katherine recalls during her first road trip with the team. "You come to Australia, and they're like four bucks and weren't that big! We're like 'wow. This is America.'"

The sisters say American and Australian cultures are very similar, but some of their new friends had no idea. Liisa was astonished when a UB student asked her if Australia had movie theaters. Getting acclimated to Buffalo's weather was another obstacle. They didn't bring a pair of boots, and were trudging through snow in tennis shoes.

"I live on the beach at home," Katherine says. "It would be a dream to be on a beach right now. Not in the snow, in the freezing cold."

Liisa and Katherine had spoken with other Division-I schools in America, but UB was the only to offer them scholarships, so they pounced at the opportunity. The question remains - why did the Bulls have to go 10,000 miles to find recruits? Felisha Legette-Jack, UB's head coach, says there wasn't much of a choice. Two years before Katherine and Liisa came to Buffalo, the Bulls lost 20 games.

"We couldn't get anybody five minutes away to come. You gotta win in order for them to come," says Legette-Jack. "Sometimes people see an opportunity and say 'I can be the reason why it's going to change.' For us, we had to win before we could become a viable option."

Over the last four years, the Bulls have gone from MAC doormats to one of the favorites to win the conference. Katherine and Liisa earned more playing time as sophomores, and during that season (2015-2016) the Bulls reached the NCAA Tournament.

"They all just said 'we're gonna stick around," says Legette-Jack. "We're gonna do as much as we can to make this thing really, really special."

The Ups twins needed time to adjust to American basketball; Katherine says she nearly fouled out every game her freshman year.

"I feel like when you first get here, you're trying to stick to a structure. Get to know everything better. When you're here for three years, you do what you're good at," she says.

There's only one problem with having identical twins on a college basketball team -- telling them apart.

"Some people just call us twin," says Liisa. "We get a transfer or a freshman, it takes them about three months to even pick us."

"Once they get on the court, whether they change their jerseys or their hair, I know them," Legette-Jack says with a chuckle. "Off the court, I'm just not that good."

After they graduate in May, the Ups sisters hope to study at Medical School in Australia.