2024-07-29 23:20:02
Few teams from any country in any Olympic sport that have exhibited the kind of dominance that the United States has in women’s basketball for a generation.
The American women have won the gold medal in nine of the past 10 Summer Olympics, including each of the past seven. It’s not just that they’ve won — they’ve done so with relative ease. In those seven gold-medal games, a stretch going from 1996-2020, the U.S. has never won by fewer than 11 points in what should theoretically be its toughest, most competitive matchup of the entire tournament. On their way to a gold medal at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo three years ago, the Americans won their six games by a combined 96 points, an average of 16 points per contest.
Heading into the 2024 Paris Olympics, that aura of superiority hasn’t waned.
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With a star-studded roster headlined by A’ja Wilson and Breanna Stewart, both two-time WNBA MVPs, the U.S. enters the famed international competition as a heavy favorite to earn its eighth consecutive gold medal.
Who will be leading the Americans in that quest? Here’s what you need to know about the U.S. women’s basketball coach, the team she’ll oversee and the history of the position:
Who is coaching women’s USA Basketball in the 2024 Paris Olympics?
The U.S. women’s basketball team at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris will be led by head coach Cheryl Reeve, the head coach and president of basketball operations for the WNBA’s Minnesota Lynx.
Since taking over as the franchise’s head coach in 2010, Reeve has led the Lynx to four WNBA championships and two additional WNBA Finals appearances. Reeve is tied for the most titles by a coach in WNBA history, sharing the distinction with Van Chancellor, who won four consecutive championships from 1997-2000 with the since-dissolved Houston Comets. In Reeve’s previous 14 seasons as head coach, Minnesota has missed the WNBA playoffs just twice. She won two other championships as an assistant coach for the Detroit Shock in 2006 and 2008.
She is a three-time WNBA coach of the year and won the league’s executive of the year award in 2019.
In addition to her WNBA achievements, Reeve has significant experience on the international stage.
She has worked with USA Basketball in some form since 2013. She was an assistant coach for each of the past two Olympics, coaching under Geno Auriemma in 2016 and Dawn Staley in 2020. The U.S. basketball teams for which she has either been a head coach or an assistant coach have gone a combined 75-4.
Since assuming the reins as the U.S. head coach following the Tokyo Games in 2021, she has helped the Americans continue to roll through international competition.
The U.S. went 8-0 during the 2022 FIBA World Cup and never won a game by fewer than 15 points. It won the quarterfinal, semifinal and championship games by a combined 95 points, with its 83-61 victory against China setting the record for the largest margin of victory in the gold-medal game in the event’s history. The Americans since went on to go 3-0 in the 2024 FIBA Women’s Olympic Qualifying Tournament.
Now, with the Olympics on the horizon, Reeve and her team will look to continue that dominance in Paris.
“I feel really excited,” Reeve said in May to Minneapolis TV station KARE. “It’s still kind of surreal — stuff still going to be kind of pinching myself. Is this really happening? We understand that there’s a past — a storied past, a dynasty past — to USA Basketball. But we weren’t all on those journeys together. This is our journey.”
Duke head coach Kara Lawson, Texas A&M head coach Joni Taylor and longtime WNBA head coach Mike Thibault, now the general manager of the Washington Mystics, will serve as Reeve’s assistant coaches for the Olympics.
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USA Basketball women’s team roster 2024
With Wilson and Stewart leading the way, the U.S. women’s basketball roster for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris features the biggest names in the sport.
Each of the 12 players on the roster has made at least two WNBA All-Star games and is 26 years old, giving the team a level of experience and helping to offer some explanation as to why burgeoning young stars like Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark weren’t included for this Olympic cycle.
Here’s the full U.S. women’s basketball roster for the Olympics:
- Guard: Diana Taurasi, Phoenix Mercury
- Guard: Sabrina Ionescu, New York Liberty
- Guard: Jewell Loyd, Seattle Storm
- Guard: Chelsea Gray, Las Vegas Aces
- Guard: Kelsey Plum, Las Vegas Aces
- Guard: Jackie Young, Las Vegas Aces
- Guard/forward: Kahleah Copper, Phoenix Mercury
- Forward: Breanna Stewart, New York Liberty
- Forward: Alyssa Thomas, Connecticut Sun
- Forward: Napheesa Collier, Minnesota Lynx
- Center: A’ja Wilson, Las Vegas Aces
- Center: Brittney Griner, Phoenix Mercury
USA Basketball women’s coaches
Reeve will be the 11th coach to lead the U.S. to the Olympics since women’s basketball was first played as a medal sport in 1976.
If history offers any guidance, this will be the 57-year-old Reeve’s only time leading her country in the Olympics. Only Auriemma has been the U.S. women’s basketball head coach in multiple Olympics, having done so in London in 2012 and Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
Since 1984, only one coach has failed to win a gold medal.
Here’s every head coach who has led the U.S. women’s basketball team in 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
- Dawn Staley: 2020
- Cheryl Reeve: 2024
* The U.S. boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow
