Few groups from any nation in any Olympic sport which have exhibited the form of dominance that america has in ladies’s basketball for a technology.
The American ladies have gained the gold medal in 9 of the previous 10 Summer time Olympics, together with every of the previous seven. It’s not simply that they’ve gained — they’ve carried out so with relative ease. In these seven gold-medal video games, a stretch going from 1996-2020, the U.S. has by no means gained by fewer than 11 factors in what ought to theoretically be its hardest, best matchup of all the match. On their strategy to a gold medal on the 2020 Summer time Olympics in Tokyo three years in the past, the People gained their six video games by a mixed 96 factors, a median of 16 factors per contest.
Heading into the 2024 Paris Olympics, that aura of superiority hasn’t waned.
2024 PARIS OLYMPICS:Observe USA TODAY’s full protection right here
With a star-studded roster headlined by A’ja Wilson and Breanna Stewart, each two-time WNBA MVPs, the U.S. enters the famed worldwide competitors as a heavy favourite to earn its eighth consecutive gold medal.
Who will likely be main the People in that quest? Right here’s what you have to know in regards to the U.S. ladies’s basketball coach, the workforce she’ll oversee and the historical past of the place:
Who’s teaching ladies’s USA Basketball within the 2024 Paris Olympics?
The U.S. ladies’s basketball workforce on the 2024 Summer time Olympics in Paris will likely be led by head coach Cheryl Reeve, the top coach and president of basketball operations for the WNBA’s Minnesota Lynx.
Since taking up because the franchise’s head coach in 2010, Reeve has led the Lynx to 4 WNBA championships and two further WNBA Finals appearances. Reeve is tied for essentially the most titles by a coach in WNBA historical past, sharing the excellence with Van Chancellor, who gained 4 consecutive championships from 1997-2000 with the since-dissolved Houston Comets. In Reeve’s earlier 14 seasons as head coach, Minnesota has missed the WNBA playoffs simply twice. She gained two different championships as an assistant coach for the Detroit Shock in 2006 and 2008.
She is a three-time WNBA coach of the 12 months and gained the league’s government of the 12 months award in 2019.
Along with her WNBA achievements, Reeve has vital expertise on the worldwide stage.
She has labored with USA Basketball in some type since 2013. She was an assistant coach for every of the previous two Olympics, teaching underneath Geno Auriemma in 2016 and Daybreak Staley in 2020. The U.S. basketball groups for which she has both been a head coach or an assistant coach have gone a mixed 75-4.
Since assuming the reins because the U.S. head coach following the Tokyo Video games in 2021, she has helped the People proceed to roll by worldwide competitors.
The U.S. went 8-0 in the course of the 2022 FIBA World Cup and by no means gained a sport by fewer than 15 factors. It gained the quarterfinal, semifinal and championship video games by a mixed 95 factors, with its 83-61 victory in opposition to China setting the document for the most important margin of victory within the gold-medal sport within the occasion’s historical past. The People since went on to go 3-0 within the 2024 FIBA Ladies’s Olympic Qualifying Event.
Now, with the Olympics on the horizon, Reeve and her workforce will look to proceed that dominance in Paris.
“I really feel actually excited,” Reeve stated in Could to Minneapolis TV station KARE. “It is nonetheless form of surreal — stuff nonetheless going to be form of pinching myself. Is that this actually occurring? We perceive that there is a previous — a storied previous, a dynasty previous — to USA Basketball. However we weren’t all on these journeys collectively. That is our journey.”
Duke head coach Kara Lawson, Texas A&M head coach Joni Taylor and longtime WNBA head coach Mike Thibault, now the final supervisor of the Washington Mystics, will function Reeve’s assistant coaches for the Olympics.
REQUIRED READING:USA Basketball will not tackle tweets from coach Cheryl Reeve that referenced Caitlin Clark
USA Basketball ladies’s workforce roster 2024
With Wilson and Stewart main the best way, the U.S. ladies’s basketball roster for the 2024 Summer time Olympics in Paris options the most important names within the sport.
Every of the 12 gamers on the roster has made a minimum of two WNBA All-Star video games and is 26 years outdated, giving the workforce a stage of expertise and serving to to supply some clarification as to why burgeoning younger stars like Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark weren’t included for this Olympic cycle.
Right here’s the complete U.S. ladies’s basketball roster for the Olympics:
- Guard: Diana Taurasi, Phoenix Mercury
- Guard: Sabrina Ionescu, New York Liberty
- Guard: Jewell Loyd, Seattle Storm
- Guard: Chelsea Grey, Las Vegas Aces
- Guard: Kelsey Plum, Las Vegas Aces
- Guard: Jackie Younger, Las Vegas Aces
- Guard/ahead: Kahleah Copper, Phoenix Mercury
- Ahead: Breanna Stewart, New York Liberty
- Ahead: Alyssa Thomas, Connecticut Solar
- Ahead: Napheesa Collier, Minnesota Lynx
- Middle: A’ja Wilson, Las Vegas Aces
- Middle: Brittney Griner, Phoenix Mercury
USA Basketball ladies’s coaches
Reeve would be the eleventh coach to guide the U.S. to the Olympics since ladies’s basketball was first performed as a medal sport in 1976.
If historical past affords any steerage, this would be the 57-year-old Reeve’s solely time main her nation within the Olympics. Solely Auriemma has been the U.S. ladies’s basketball head coach in a number of Olympics, having carried out so in London in 2012 and Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
Since 1984, just one coach has did not win a gold medal.
Right here’s each head coach who has led the U.S. ladies’s basketball workforce within the Olympics:
- Billie Jean Moore: 1976
- Sue Gunter: 1980*
- Pat Summitt: 1984
- Kay Yow: 1988
- Theresa Grentz: 1992
- Tara VanDerveer: 1996
- Nell Fortner: 2000
- Van Chancellor: 2004
- Anne Donovan: 2008
- Geno Auriemma: 2012-16
- Daybreak Staley: 2020
- Cheryl Reeve: 2024
* The U.S. boycotted the 1980 Summer time Olympics in Moscow
