SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — As Caitlin Clark prepares to play her first basketball game in nearly eight months, it’s impossible for her to squash the butterflies she says she’s feeling.
Making her return to game action at the FIBA World Cup qualifiers for Team USA, she doesn’t exactly want to.
“I don’t want to call it nerves but excitement to play,” Clark said after practice Monday.
“This is a really cool opportunity. If you don’t feel that way, then you probably don’t care enough,” she continued. “Certainly, that’s how I feel about it for myself.
“This is a different stage. You’re not going to come out here and be the star player. That’s not how it’s going to be for USA Basketball.”
It is Clark’s first assignment with the senior national team, and it’s the first set of organized games she has played since her sophomore WNBA season was riddled with injuries and eventually cut short.
The Indiana Fever star guard has been sidelined since mid-July with a variety of leg injuries — a right groin injury suffered July 15 followed by a bone bruise on her left ankle that Clark said never allowed her to fully test out how her groin was recovering.
But even before that, she had hurt her left quad and her left groin. She played in just 13 games with the Fever last season, averaging 16.5 points and 8.8 assists. She had not missed a game during her rookie campaign.
Clark did most of her rehab and training away from her team. Earlier this week, she told reporters in Miami that the first USA Basketball camp she participated in in December was a good checkpoint for her. During that camp, Clark said she was 100% healthy but acknowledged she didn’t know how long it would take for her to feel like herself again.
“I feel like I’ve put myself in the best possible shape I could be in at this point,” Clark said Monday. “The first game is the hardest, but once you get in kind of a flow of things, you figure things out.”
Clark’s conditioning and workload will be tests, as Team USA is set to play five games in seven days during the qualifying tournament.
“It’s similar to the WNBA when you have back-to-backs; you have one day in between,” Clark said. “But [this is] also international competition. That’s what I’ve dealt with in the past, and looking forward — hopefully, at the World Cup, if I’m lucky enough to make the team — it will be the exact same scenario.”
“Getting to [play] at this level for my first time back, there’s no better way to get tossed into the fire,” she continued.
Along with Clark, Paige Bueckers, Angel Reese and Kiki Iriafen also are making their senior national team debuts.
“The buildup to games is probably the hardest part,” Clark said. “Once you’re in the game, you’re just playing, you’re in the flow.
“[But] it’s the buildup to get to that point. For me, it’s getting back into the routine of how you prepare for game days. After the first and second game, it will be second nature.”
“I know the day of the game I’m going to be hyped up,” Clark added. “Probably a little anxious, but in a good way.”
