March is a month that feels nonstop with basketball. But maybe nobody will expertise that greater than Kara Lawson. Over the following few weeks, Lawson will globetrot from Atlanta to Puerto Rico to Durham, N.C., and past as she balances her teaching duties for Duke within the ACC and NCAA tournaments in addition to Team USA within the World Cup qualifiers.
Though Team USA has already certified for the World Cup, which might be performed in Berlin in September, the crew is nonetheless required to compete within the qualifying event in San Juan, Puerto Rico, subsequent week. But for Team USA the additional reps are welcome. The crew possible will characteristic a number of new gamers within the World Cup (the game’s largest worldwide event exterior of the Olympics), and Lawson might be making her first teaching look because the senior crew’s head coach. On this World Cup qualifying roster alone, six gamers will make their senior nationwide crew debuts, together with younger stars Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese and Paige Bueckers.
But these further reps occur to return at crucial time of the school basketball season, that means Lawson might be pulled in a number of instructions and between her teaching duties.
Duke kicks off its ACC event run at 11 a.m. (ET) Friday within the quarterfinals towards Clemson. The convention event’s semifinals and finals fall on the identical two days as Team USA’s pre-World Cup qualifiers coaching camp in Miami. As lengthy as Duke advances, Lawson — in addition to Duke assistant Tia Jackson, who might be a Team USA assistant — will stick with the Blue Devils whereas coaching camp is run by the Team USA assistants Golden State Valkyries coach Natalie Nakase, Phoenix Mercury coach Nate Tibbetts and Indiana Fever coach Stephanie White.
If Duke, the No. 1 seed, advances to the ACC event title sport, Lawson will meet Team USA in Puerto Rico on Sunday evening, offering her and the crew two days collectively earlier than they hit the ground for the primary sport of the World Cup qualifiers.
From March 11-17, Team USA will play 5 video games towards Senegal, Puerto Rico, Italy, New Zealand and Spain. Back in Durham, Lawson’s Duke assistants will start getting ready the Blue Devils for his or her NCAA Tournament run. Team USA confirmed that Lawson will go away Puerto Rico earlier than the conclusion of Team USA video games, however a lead assistant has not but been named for the span.
Whether Lawson takes in Selection Sunday on March 15 from Puerto Rico together with her nationwide crew gamers or in Durham together with her faculty crew in unsure, however it is going to be a vital day because the Blue Devils, who earned a No. 3 seed in the latest top-16 NCAA Tournament reveal, placing Duke in internet hosting place. The first spherical of the NCAA Tournament begins March 20.
If it looks as if lots of necessary basketball video games are occurring in a comparatively brief period of time, that’s as a result of they’re.
When USA Basketball chosen Lawson as the pinnacle coach for the 2028 Olympic cycle in September 2025, it understood conflicts may come up. Some can be simpler to navigate than others. Like again in December, when Team USA used a 10-day break in Duke’s sport schedule to carry coaching camp on Duke’s campus. But discovering these pockets are essential for USA Basketball as it really works, with smaller time frames, to jell totally different teams of gamers throughout every Olympic cycle.
“As the year goes, and you’ve got two or three of these camps, maybe more, maybe less, all of a sudden you look back and you’re like, ‘Oh, we got like a solid 14 days together,’” said Sue Bird, the national team director and a five-time Olympic gold medalist. “It does carry over. The learning carries over. The understanding carries over. We definitely need reminders, but the feel of playing under a certain system carries over.”
USA Basketball was additionally able to make these changes and training shifts due to what it discovered when South Carolina coach Dawn Staley led the senior nationwide crew through the 2024 Olympic cycle. Cheryl Reeve acted because the senior crew head coach on 4 totally different events — two throughout worldwide tournaments, which might have brought on Staley to overlook at the very least three regular-season Gamecocks’ video games had she determined to attend, and two faculty excursions.
Some of those further commitments, like enjoying within the World Cup qualifiers even when the crew has already certified, are required by FIBA. But they’re additionally seen as a crucial a part of persevering with the gold medal streak for Team USA.
The ladies have received eight straight gold medals, relationship again to the 1996 Olympics. But as extra gamers within the nationwide crew pool started competing abroad through the WNBA offseasons, a restricted variety of coaching intervals had been potential merely as a result of logistics of participant availability. After the 2018 Olympics, veterans Bird and Diana Taurasi pushed for the nationwide crew pool gamers to have extra preparation time collectively. The nationwide crew added further trainings, exhibition video games and faculty excursions. This meant gamers and training staffs had extra nationwide crew obligations. And, when USA Basketball named a school coach as its head coach, extra potential conflicts.
With Team USA prepared to include new, younger gamers earlier than its protection of 4 consecutive World Cup championships and Duke hoping to construct on its ACC regular-season title, Lawson has a jam-packed and pressure-filled basketball schedule forward. For the previous level guard who discovered methods to lead groups underneath the stress of Pat Summitt at Tennessee, maybe there’s nothing that sounds higher or extra acquainted.
