Last week, the U.S. women’s basketball team participated in a FIBA World Cup qualifying tournament in Puerto Rico.
You’ll notice that the key verb in the previous paragraph is “participated.”
That’s because the American women, who are looking for a 12th FIBA World Cup, had already qualified for this September’s World Cup no matter how well they did in the qualification tournament.
For the U.S. team and its coaching staff, it was a practice under tournament conditions for the team as well as a number of its individual performers. Many had already been participating in competitive situations such as overseas leagues as well as the Unrivaled 3×3 promotion.
When the slate of opponents was released for the qualifier, I wrote one comment in social media: “40 points.” I seriously thought this U.S. team would not only win their games, but make their opponents look silly doing it, even with a lineup missing veterans like A’ja Wilson, Breanna Stewart, Sabrina Ionescu, and Brittney Griner.
Well, the U.S. team, thanks to clever passing and dead-eye logo shooting, did win each game by double-digits, and three times outscored their opposition by 40 or more. It was an awesome performance.
At the end of the tournament, U.S. guard Caitlin Clark was given the tournament MVP for being the second-best scorer for the team with 11.6 points, and leading the tournament with 6.4 assists per game.
I’ve seen some comments about how Clark only had seven points in the final game with Spain. However, she did have seven assists and helped get the ball to teammates. Kahlea Copper (20 points), Kelsey Plum (18), and Dearica Hamby (14) led the Stars and Stripes.
As this tournament was only meant to qualify four out of six teams to the World Cup, there were no single-elimination contests in this tournament, no must-win games for the survival of the team.
As such, it would be easy to overlook how well the Americans played.
The rest of the world needs to take note.