Charles-Furlow graduated in the University of Tennessee’s class of 1991 with outstanding accomplishments as a student-athlete. She led the Lady Vol basketball team in scoring, rebounding, and blocked shots in both the 1990 and 1991 seasons. She was a key contributor to the 1988–99 NCAA championship team and the first Tennessee or SEC player to receive the most prestigious award in women’s collegiate basketball in 1991—the Margaret Wade Trophy. Charles-Furlow was a KODAK All-American in both 1990 and 1991.
As a senior, she was the Southeastern Conference’s Female Athlete of the Year, a member of the US Basketball Writers’ Association and Basketball Weekly’s All-America Teams, and was named to the all-tournament teams at the NCAA Final Four, Mideast Regional, and SEC championships. The Lady Vols retired her number (32).
Charles-Furlow played basketball professionally overseas in Italy, Japan, Turkey, and France from 1991 to 1996 before being taken with the eighth overall pick by the Los Angeles Sparks in the 1997 WNBA Elite Draft. She was a member of three national teams, including the 1992 US Olympic Team that won a bronze medal at the Barcelona Olympics. She was one of six women to be honored by the Upper Deck Company in 1994 with their own basketball cards for creating the excitement in the preceding five years that brought women’s basketball the popularity it had begun to receive. She returned to UT as an assistant Lady Vols basketball coach in 2008 after serving as an assistant coach at the University of Detroit, Mercy, and at Auburn.