Following a disappointing 11th-place finish at the 2024 Olympics, Canada Basketball is focusing on the future.
Expectations for Canada's women's basketball team were high heading into 2024. Veteran WNBA stars Natalie Achonwa and Kia Nurse were set to lead the squad into a fourth-straight Olympics in Paris, where the country was expected to push for the podium. Instead, Canada went winless over three group-stage games, finished 11th in the tournament and slipped to seventh in the world rankings. Now, the organization is focused on the future.
The Canadian Press spoke with Steve Baur, Canada Basketball's interim head of women's high performance, about what comes next for the team. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. CP: You've had a few months now to reflect on the Olympics. How do you look at the performance in Paris now? BAUR: “I think Paris is still tough for us. At the end of the day, we’re in a really exciting era for Canadian basketball but we certainly had higher expectations for ourselves and higher goals than how we finished. And I look at the growth that we’ve had — we’ve been to four consecutive Olympics — and to not get out of pool play, we thought we were ready for a bigger step. I look at somebody like Natalie Achonwa who’s been there for all four and it still pains me to look at how the Paris Olympics finished and that was our final moment together. So it’s still tough. For sure, it gives us some lessons learned and some motivations for next steps, but Paris still stings.” CP: What did you personally learn and what did you learn about this group? BAUR: “The group, I think we’ve learned some really great resilience. I think there are and were a lot of emotions that came out of that loss (to Nigeria). But I think what’s been truly great is the people who went through it, who are all veterans now — some are as young as (18-year-old) Syla Swords and some on the other end of the spectrum like a Kayla Alexander who’d be a more veteran player — we’ve already gotten together as a team again to talk about what does need to chang
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