Canadian women embrace challenge of a lifetime

There is no doubt that the Canadian women’s basketball team is deep in talent with multi-positional players dotting the roster, as much athleticism as it has ever had, and a global reputation for being one of the better defensive teams on Earth.

It should give rise to great optimism for the World Cup — which begins Saturday in gorgeous Tenerife, Spain — and it does. But there are subtleties we don’t know and subtleties even they don’t know, and the burning question as they try find a way to the podium is this: Canada is good, but is it special?

That’s often the difference between a medal and a disappointment, an intangible … and the scary thing is that no one knows.

They will score and they will defend, and they will beat lesser teams purely because they are better basketball players than most of the others. The worrisome part is whether they will find that special attribute that turns games against teams of equal talent their way.

“The next step for us is, we need to be playing for a medal,” said coach Lisa Thomaidis, who guided Canada to a fifth-place showing at the 2014 World Cup and a top-eight finish at the 2016 Rio Olympics. “We haven’t won a quarterfinal in a major international event yet.

“Our eyes are on that prize and it’s going to be a tough road to get there. World Cup, every team is going to be solid and we have to do a lot of work to get there, but we’re happy with the process.”

There is little question about the experience that runs through the Canadian roster. There are eight holdovers from the 2016 Olympics: Kim Gaucher, Miranda Ayim, Nayo RaincockEkunwe, Natalie Achonwa, Nirra Fields, Miah-Marie Langlois, Kia Nurse and Michelle Plouffe.

Gaucher, Langlois, Nurse, Ayim, Fields and Plouffe are left from the Canadian team that finished fifth in 2014, while Gaucher, Ayim, Achonwa and Plouffe

represented Canada at the 2012 London Olympics, a tournament that represented a breakthrough with a top-eight finish against long odds.

It has infused them not only with a measure of familiarity, but the success makes them realize that greater accomplishments are possible. That confidence cannot be overstated.

“With this group there is a lot of collective confidence,” Thomaidis said. “They really have a lot of belief in each other. I think there is a lot of belief there that we can beat anyone and really perform well and that’s fun to see, and now we have to leverage that for results.”

Canada begins the 16-team tournament Saturday at 12:30 p.m. (all times Eastern) against Greece, ranked No. 20, and plays No. 16 Korea on Sunday at 6:30 a.m. The first round finishes Tuesday with a pivotal game against world No. 4 France (3:30 a.m.) before a crossover round of 16 on Wednesday and the medal round starting with Friday quarterfinals. There is no over-the-air TV. The games will be streamed on livebasketball.tv and DAZN. The confidence is wellearned, despite the large hurdle of getting to the semifinals that remains. The growth of the team has been evident for more than a decade, with incremental improvement at every major international event.

“I think there’s been a unifying vision, really targeting people from a younger age, having a vision and a culture that’s widespread,” Ayim said. “So we have people feeding into the program who already know our offence ... We have something that’s just been building, building for the past 15 years and before that. It’s been a slow and steady climb.”

The seamlessness of the roster — continuity that is the envy of the senior men’s team — has created a level of comfort that’s important.

“Right now we’re sitting at No. 5 (in the FIBA rankings) and before, when I started with the team, it’s almost like you couldn’t even dream of being at that level,” said Ayim, the forward from London. “We feel like we’re coming into major competitions with a seat at the table. We’re not just happy to be there. We want to do something, we want to medal, we want to make people notice that Canada Basketball really is a force.”

The need for something “special” to happen is acute.

“We haven’t proven anything yet — that’s a big part of it,” Thomaidis said. “We have a chip on our shoulder and a ways to go. The next step for us is, we need to be playing for a medal.”