Hailey Van Lith, women’s 3x3 basketball team finally get a win: ‘We still have a chance’

It’s been far from the start they were hoping for, but USA Basketball women’s 3x3 team is not out just yet.

In a surprise to many, the defending gold medal champions dropped their first three Olympic pool play games, and risked elimination with a loss against Spain on Thursday afternoon. But, Hailey Van Lith, Cierra Burdick, Rhyne Howard, and Dearica Hamby pulled out their first victory of the Paris Olympics, a 17-11 win over Spain.

The team’s record improves to 1-3 — still not a great place to be, and still last in the overall stnadings — but now with a clear pathway going forward.

“We’re gonna have to play tough and get on a roll here, but we still have a chance,” Van Lith said, per the Dallas Morning News.

The U.S. women’s 3x3 team won gold at the last Olympics, but that was an entirely different roster exclusively made up of WNBA players: Jackie Young and Kelsey Plum (both of whom are on the 5x5 Olympic basketball team), Allisha Gray (a WNBA all-star) and Stefanie Dolson (who probably should’ve been an all-star this season).

This roster hasn’t had nearly as much time to gel, and that’s shown through four contests. Burdick and Van Lith were both members of the 3x3 team that won the gold medal in the 2023 World Championships, but they were led by Cameron Brink, who was replaced by Hamby due to an ACL tear suffered last month. Hamby and Howard have never played with the two more experienced members of the roster.

The group has been vocal about their limited practice time and experience together, but have maintained throughout the week that they still feel confident they have a shot.

After the women fell to 0-3 after the loss to Australia, Rhyne Howard said staying united was key, per NPR.

“We have to stay together. We know what is not clicking for us, and we have to be better at that,” she said. “We are just trying to take what we can learn from it and be better next game.”

Against Spain, Hailey Van Lith emerged from a slump in order to score 5 points on 3-5 shooting. Howard — the most decorated pro on the roster — also added 5 points, Cierra Burdick 4 points, and Dearica Hamby 3 points.

The top two teams in the standings automatically qualify for the semi-finals, and the next four qualify for a play-in round to duke it out for the other two semi-finals berths. So, in order to even have a chance at a medal, the United States will have to find a way into the top six Olympic teams. Right now, they’re last in the standings, and so they’ll have to be perfect the rest of the way.

Tomorrow is a critical day for the U.S. 3x3 team — they’ll face France in the morning (7am ET) and Canada in the afternoon (12pm ET). Two wins would probably bump the U.S. out of the bottom two and give them a chance to compete in the play-in, but anything short of that will eliminate the defending champions.

Then, on Saturday, they’ll face China at 1:05pm ET in the last pool play game of the Olympics.

In order to advance to the play-in — a qualifying round ahead of the semi-finals — the U.S. women will likely need to win all three games, a tall task especially considering the rocky start.