Mccoughtry thrives on united front
When Angel McCoughtry takes the court with the U.S. women’s basketball team in London, she’ll be surrounded by her former enemies.
The former Louisville star spent four years trying to beat Big East rival Connecticut but went 0-for-8. At the Olympics she’ll play with six former Huskies under the direction of UConn coach Geno Auriemma.
“Hey, like they always say, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, right?” McCoughtry said. “Don’t tell him I said that.”
McCoughtry, 25, has been busy, playing for her Turkish club in the fall, leading the Atlanta Dream to the WNBA Finals last year, producing a documentary on her life and pursuing her talents as a recording artist.
This year, she leads the WNBA in scoring with an average of 22.7 points per game. A knee injury has kept McCoughtry out of the last two games, but she says it won’t be a 100 100 factor during the Olympics.
I remember (37-year-old WNBA player) Tina Thompson, last year when we were playing in the (Eastern Conference) finals, she kind of encouraged me and said, “You know what? It’s going to be the best time of your life. You’ll enjoy it.” ... I mean, let’s be honest, she can still play. She’s playing great, playing like she’s our age. So I knew she was kind of passing down the torch.
They (U.S. teammates) are so good offensively it helps my defense get better. Offensively it helps because if I can score on the best defensive players in the world, one being Tamika Catchings, you know you can score on anyone. These are the most athletic, the best girls you can play against. And then playing with them, you kind of pick up on their characteristics, their leadership skills, things like that.
Coach Geno, he always says we have no time to waste. We don’t waste time. We’re not goofing off, playing around; we have things we have to get done. We don’t have a lot of time, so everybody’s just focused on what we need to get done.
I remember the first day I came to USA practice, and they (UConn) had just beaten us in the championship. He said, “Oh, Angel, I’ve got something for you.” I said, “What you got, Coach? You got something for me?” and I really thought he had something for me. He said, “Yeah,” and he opened up a big, shiny cham- pionship ring that they (won) against us. They all started busting out laughing.
It’s a documentary. A lot of people don’t really know my story. They think I’m a great basketball player coming up all my life. It was never like that. So I tell my story to inspire. It’s actually got clips from when I was younger and stuff. It takes a while to do a documentary, but we got a lot accomplished. … (I’ve) been working on it now for about a year.
It’s more like I can sing and I can rap. My style is like, who can I compare myself to? Kind of like, I don’t want to say Nicki Minaj, because I don’t want to compare myself to that. But my music is fun like that … like a Lauryn Hill type.