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Paige Bueckers, Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese are among five players who will make their U.S. senior national team competitive debuts in the FIBA Women’s World Cup qualifying tournament next month.
The Dallas Wings’ Bueckers and Indiana Fever’s Clark are the past two WNBA Rookie of the Year award winners. Reese, of the Chicago Sky, was part of the 2024 draft class along with Clark. Two 2025 WNBA rookies along with Beuckers, the Washington Mystics’ Sonia Citron and Kiki Iriafen, also will be on the squad, which was announced Wednesday by USA Basketball.
The qualifying tournament will be in San Juan, Puerto Rico, from March 11-17. It’s a chance to prepare for the World Cup, for which the United States has already qualified after winning the 2025 AmeriCup competition last summer. The FIBA World Cup will be in Berlin from Sept. 4-13. The United States has won that event 11 times, including the past four in a row.
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Clark’s Fever teammate Aliyah Boston, the 2023 WNBA Rookie of the Year, also will be on the 12-player roster. She last competed for Team USA in the 2024 FIBA Women’s Olympic qualifying tournament.
The World Cup qualifying tournament roster is rounded out by players who medaled in the 2024 Paris Olympics. Kahleah Copper, Chelsea Gray, Kelsey Plum and Jackie Young all won gold on the United States’ 5-on-5 team. Copper played last season for the Phoenix Mercury, Plum for the Los Angeles Sparks and Gray and Young for the 2025 WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces.
Dearica Hamby, who spent 2025 with the Sparks, and Rhyne Howard, who played for the Atlanta Dream and was the 2022 WNBA Rookie of the Year, won the bronze medal in Paris in 3×3.
Most of the WNBA’s players who aren’t currently on rookie contracts are free agents awaiting a new collective bargaining agreement before signing with teams for the 2026 season, which is scheduled to start in May pending the new deal.
Three-time Olympic and World Cup champion Breanna Stewart, who played for the New York Liberty last season, will be with the U.S. team for a precompetition training camp March 7-8 in Miami.
Duke women’s basketball coach Kara Lawson, who is also the U.S. senior national team coach, will lead the squad in San Juan. WNBA head coaches Natalie Nakase (Golden State Valkyries), Nate Tibbetts (Mercury) and Stephanie White (Fever) will be her assistants. Lawson will return to the Blue Devils to get ready for the NCAA tournament prior to the qualifying tournament ending, at which point the assistants will be in charge.
The United States opens play March 11 vs. Senegal, followed by Puerto Rico (March 12), Italy (March 14), New Zealand (March 15) and Spain (March 17). National Team managing director Sue Bird, who selected this roster, will keep evaluating players before picking the World Cup team later this year.
