Kara Lawson’s Duke, Team USA balancing act is its own March Madness
March is a month that feels nonstop with basketball. But maybe nobody will expertise that greater than Kara Lawson. Over the subsequent few weeks, Lawson will globetrot from Atlanta to Puerto Rico to Durham, NC, 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.
Although Team USA has already certified for the World Cup, which will probably be performed in Berlin in September, the crew is nonetheless required to compete within the qualifying match in San Juan, Puerto Rico, subsequent week. But for Team USA the additional reps are welcome. The crew will probably characteristic a number of new gamers within the World Cup (the game’s greatest worldwide match outdoors of the Olympics), and Lawson will probably 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 come back at an important time of the school basketball season, which means Lawson will probably be pulled in a number of instructions and between his teaching duties.
Duke kicks off its ACC match run at 11 am (ET) Friday within the quarterfinals towards Clemson. The convention match’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 will probably 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 match title recreation, Lawson will meet Team USA in Puerto Rico on Sunday night time, offering her and the crew two days collectively earlier than they hit the ground for the primary recreation 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 is 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 like a variety of essential basketball video games are occurring in a comparatively quick period of time, that is 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 might 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 recreation schedule to carry coaching camp on Duke’s campus. But discovering these pockets are vital 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 in the course of 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 triggered Staley to overlook not less than three regular-season Gamecocks’ video games she had 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 obligatory a part of persevering with the gold medal streak for Team USA.
The girls have gained eight straight gold medals, relationship again to the 1996 Olympics. But as extra gamers within the nationwide crew pool started competing abroad in the course of the WNBA offseasons, a restricted variety of coaching durations had been potential merely because of the 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 university 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 how one can lead groups underneath the strain of Pat Summitt at Tennessee, maybe there’s nothing that sounds higher or extra acquainted.
