Griner among 14 invited to US women’s basketball camp

Brittney Griner speaks during the N.A.N.N.C., New York, U.S., April 13, 2023.

WOMEN’S NBA star Brittney Griner and U.S. college phenomenon Caitlin Clark are among the 14 players named by USA Basketball for next week’s women’s national team training camp.

The camp, scheduled for April 3-5 in Cleveland, Ohio, will feature nine Olympians, including five-time Olympic champion Diana Taurasi.

Griner, a 6-foot-9 (2.06 meter) center, has been a key player for Team USA, helping them secure gold at the Rio and Tokyo Olympics. She made a remarkable return to the WNBA last year after being held in a Russian prison for most of 2022 due to a cannabis-related incident. Griner was exchanged for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.

Clark, who recently became the alltime leading scorer in U.S. major college basketball history, will join the training camp depending on her University of Iowa team’s performance in this weekend’s NCAA women’s “March Madness” tournament games.

Clark has helped three U.S. junior national teams win international titles, most recently in 2021.

The U.S. women’s basketball team will seek an eighth consecutive Olympic gold medal in Paris later this year, which would be the 10th overall in 11 tries dating back to 1984.

Eight members of the U.S. women’s squad that won a fourth consecutive world title in 2022 will also be on the camp roster, including Shakira Austin, Sabrina Ionescu and Tokyo Olympic gold medalists Ariel Atkins, Chelsea Gray, Jewell Loyd, Kelsey Plum, Breanna Stewart and A’ja Wilson.

The Americans have lost only one game in the past 10 Olympics, falling in a 1992 semifinal to the Commonwealth of Independent States when they settled for a bronze medal.