Iowa girls’s basketball star Caitlin Clark was among the many 14 gamers chosen for Crew USA’s coaching camp roster in Cleveland on April 3-5, USA Basketball introduced Thursday. Clark may take part if she doesn’t advance to the Closing 4, which is held in Cleveland concurrently with the USA coaching camp.
Clark has earned three gold medals with USA Basketball junior nationwide groups, most not too long ago on the 2021 USA Girls’s U19 Nationwide Crew. She averaged a team-high 14.3 factors, 5.3 rebounds and 5.6 assists per recreation and was named MVP of the competitors.
Clark, 22, is the one present collegiate participant listed on the roster. She’s virtually actually the highest choose within the WNBA Draft subsequent month and her accolades benefit robust consideration. She’s the main scorer in NCAA basketball historical past — males’s or girls’s — with 3,830 factors. On Monday, Clark set the NCAA girls’s single-season factors file with 1,113.
There’s additionally the maintain Clark has within the nationwide panorama. The Hawkeyes set girls’s basketball viewership data on six totally different networks or streaming platforms this yr, and Iowa’s first two NCAA Event video games have been by far essentially the most watched for a non-Closing 4 within the sport’s historical past. Iowa’s 62-52 win in opposition to West Virginia on Monday recorded 5.4 million viewers, blowing out the earlier non-Closing 4 file which was set two days early by Iowa in opposition to Holy Cross (3.23 million viewers).
All however two of Iowa’s 35 video games this yr have been offered out — residence, away or impartial. All eyes are on Clark regardless of the place she performs. If she’s in Paris, you’ll be able to wager American properties will tune in to see the Iowa celebrity, regardless of what number of minutes she will get.
The Athletic unanimously named Clark the Nationwide Participant of the 12 months this season. She led the nation in factors (31.8) and assists per recreation (8.8).
9 Olympians made the coaching camp roster, together with five-time Olympic champion Diana Taurasi, Ariel Atkins, Chelsea Grey, Brittney Griner, Jewell Loyd, Kelsey Plum, Breanna Stewart, A’ja Wilson and Jackie Younger.
With Clark making the coaching camp roster, she’s now within the pool of candidates for the Crew USA choice committee to resolve on the Olympic workforce. The committee is made up of Daybreak Staley, Seimone Augustus, DeLisha Milton-Jones, Jennifer Rizzotti and WNBA head of league operations Bethany Donaphin.
It will not be uncommon for Clark to make the Olympic roster as a latest grad. Breanna Stewart made the roster in 2016 following UConn. Candace Parker (2008) and Taurasi (2004) have been the others.
The ultimate roster launch is anticipated in late spring.
The ladies’s Olympic basketball match ideas off July 28 and concludes August 11. Crew USA’s first recreation is in opposition to Japan on July 29. The U.S. girls’s basketball workforce is making an attempt to win its eighth consecutive Olympic gold medal.
Crew USA coaching camp roster
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(Picture: Matthew Holst / Getty Photographs)