Episode 37 - Team USA Sets the Standard, and the WNBA Playoff Math Gets Real

Transcript is computer generated and may contain errors.

Caitlin: And she told that group, like, we are the standard. Yeah. You don’t want to be the ones, right? We do not wanna be the ones that let the standard slide. Yeah. Hi, I’m Caitlin.

Alex: Hi, I’m Alex.

Caitlin: And this is Raising the Game, a women’s sports podcast covering primetime performers, the business behind the athletes and leagues and what the growth of women’s sports means for the next generation of women’s athletes.

Alex: Episode 37, and we have FIBA updates big time. Yeah,

Caitlin: I mean, it’s over.

Alex: It’s over. We have a champion.

Caitlin: We have a champion. We’ll get into that right away in headlines.

Alex: Yeah, we got WNBA playoff picture.

Caitlin: But I was gonna say, it means that the W is back this week. We are so excited, so excited in fact that we are going to the Lynx game on Friday, among other fun things

Alex: That we’re looking forward to.

Caitlin: But we also have the ongoing battle for final spot in WSL playoffs and all the shuffling that’s going on amongst those top teams.

Alex: I don’t remember what game we had on, was it the game yesterday? And they were, they spent like five minutes talking about the table. And I was like, yes, this is all we’ve been talking

Caitlin: About. Yes, for real. It was the Portland game. Portland, Portland, Chicago. Yeah, that game. They were talking about that, and then Portland went and gifted away two

Alex: Points, like, the last minute or whatever.

Caitlin: Well, in stoppage time. Like, you can’t do that. You can’t do that. And then, yeah, we’ve got a number of headlines. As always, there’s lots of things to talk about. U.S. open tennis wrapped up. WPBL playoffs are going on. We finally have some PWHL headlines. Yeah, we do. And we expect that to be picking up here as we approach the season. We still have four teams, guys, with no names yet. Yeah. We’re waiting on that.

Alex: We’re also gonna talk about your favorite

Caitlin: Team. PWHL. And we are going to talk about my favorite team, the U.S. women’s National Soccer Team, because they have some friendlies coming up at the beginning of October against world number one, España.

Alex: Yeah.

Caitlin: Spain.

Alex: Yeah spain

Caitlin: All right, you got to do the thing.

Alex: Oh yeah, we gotta push the buttons. Push all the subscribe buttons. Subscribe, like, star, thumbs up, whatever it is, heart.

Caitlin: Yep, share it.

Alex: Mostly share, I think. Share is probably the best one.

Caitlin: Yeah. Favorite thing.

Alex: I just literally said two minutes ago, I don’t know what I have for my favorite thing. What did we do? I don’t even know. I mean, we had a, I had a lot of fun yesterday, it was not women’s sports related, but just sports related, hanging out with all the neighbors, all the kids running around causing a ruckus.

Caitlin: Yes, yes, that was fun. Lots of kids, oh my God, so many kids. Which was great, just let the kids run free, feed them pizza, but adults can drink and watch football, that’s kind of ideal. my favorite thing, so I think I have two. One is you brought the girls to one of the high school.

Alex: Oh, yeah.

Caitlin: Yeah. Games. The team that I coach was playing the one of the local high schools near us and you brought the girls and I could hear them screaming from the stand. Mommy. Mommy, turn around. Mommy, look at that balloon. It’s constant. It’s like, I’m working.

Alex: And if you turn around, they were doing this wall on top of me, like climbing

Caitlin: Me. Excuse me. Come and get to watch the high school girls play. That was a really great game by my team. Unfortunate result, I think, but played really, really well. Builds our confidence, for sure. And then my second thing, we’re going to talk about it more in our women’s basketball segment. But I honestly loved watching Team USA play basketball. I know that there weren’t they weren’t always the games, but the way that that team again, I have a lot more to say about it in our segment, but came together, got the job done. Yep. Is really awesome to see, and it also felt really drama-free relative to the WNBA, relative

Alex: To the WNBA. The second half of that championship game was something else, like a master class.

Caitlin: Totally. And I will talk about that too.

Alex: All right. The answers are starting early today,

Caitlin: Folks. I’m so sorry.

Alex: All right, we’re going to headlines.

Caitlin: Speaking of, I’m setting you up.

Headlines: FIBA Gold, ESPN’s Women’s Sports Sundays, and a US Open Sweep

Alex: Yeah, oh yeah, speaking of Team USA wins their fifth consecutive and 12th overall FIBA Women’s World Cup Gold in Berlin, a tournament that saw over 236,000 fans attend across the two weeks.

Caitlin: Yeah, so Team USA went undefeated. They were challenged by France in this final game, but ultimately ended up kind of stomping them, specifically in that third quarter. Breanna Stewart took home her second FIBA World Cup MVP trophy. First ever to do it. Yep, first player ever to do that. She did it back in 2018. And Stewie and Jackie Young were both named first-team all-stars, along with France’s Gabby Williams, who had a stellar tournament, Germany’s Leonie Fiebich, and Spain’s Iyana Martín. All three of those players had incredible performances for their countries. I think we kind of saw bright spots across the board for a number of those players. So more to come.

ESPN Expands Women’s Sports Sundays

Alex: We have a lot more to say about this. We’ll talk about it. ESPN expands its Women’s Sports Sundays this fall, adding 11 more weeks to the schedule and including NCAA women’s volleyball.

Caitlin: So I was reading an article about this. It’s, this is a big deal. First of all, right? So this was announced back in the spring that ESPN was going to be replacing Sunday night baseball with this women’s sports and as you can imagine, there were a lot of critics who were like, that’s never going to work. And lo and behold, it works, people watch, and they signed on for another 11 weeks to go into the fall season. So this 11 week period technically is starting September 13th. So, or started this past Sunday, I should say. And now they’re able to fold in 14th. Wait,

Alex: No, 13th is right. Okay, you were looking at me like I’m crazy. I was thinking how far out is that?

Caitlin: Yeah and now they’re able to fold in like NCAA volleyball like Alex said and so I think there’s going to be days where they actually are able to run women’s sports programming from like 1 p.M in the afternoon all the way through the evening slate which is fantastic because as we’ve discussed here a number of times If you put it on the television, people do watch it. Also will include WNBA playoffs and key stretch games in the NWSL season. It is incredibly important because as we spend so much time talking on this podcast about just this kind of meteoric growth that we’re seeing across women’s sports, and it seems like there’s eyeballs on it, left, right and center. There still is under-representation specifically in like broadcast TV, right? And so the Sports Business Journal just put out a report that showed that less than 10% of TV broadcast is women’s sports. Still and our question obviously is why like this is a product that gets eyeballs that

Alex: Go back to the olympics it was like 56 percent is focused on women

Caitlin: Over and over again. It’s frustrating to see that, but at the same time, now you do have a major network signing on for more. Hopefully more to come with that. We’ll talk about the PWHL in just a second, too.

US Open: Rybakina Takes No. 1, Townsend Completes the Doubles Slam

Alex: In U.S. open Tennis, Elena Rybakina wins the Women’s Singles Tournament in three sets over Aryna Sabalenka, moving her firmly into the world number one ranking.

Caitlin: Yeah, I think that was, it sounded like it was quite dramatic. Sabalenka just was not pleased with her loss. I don’t know how else to say it. I think she was very frustrated by all the chatter around her losing the world number one, which actually happened in the semi-final, or actually a quarter-final match that Rybakina won over an unseated Zhang from China. And it just kind of went from there. She tends to get kind of, a little prickly with reporters. Yeah. We also watched Rybakina take on Coco Gauff in the semifinals. She she actually looked like she was going to get beat by Gauff. Gauff has been on this incredible terror lately. Yeah. Made it back to the semifinals, which is huge. And but Rybakina held firm. She’s got a big serve, big forehand, like she was able to to kind of outlast Gauff. And the other one I want to call out is, which is huge news, honestly, Taylor Townsend, American Taylor Townsend completes her doubles career Grand Slam. So she had won the doubles tournament at Wimbledon, Australian Open and the French Open. Yeah. And she won this U.S. open with her partner, Kateřina Siniaková, which is awesome. And then she showed up to the post-match presser with Not one, but two honey deuces, which is the signature drink of the U.S. open, apparently.

Alex: OK. Oh, is that the one that looks like it’s a tennis can? No, it’s not the tennis

Caitlin: Can. It has like it looks like little tennis balls across the top of it.

Alex: It’s

Caitlin: Honeydew melon. I don’t know how they came up with this, but. But she’s a real treat. We talked about her in her impassioned play against Sabalenka in the semis, or on the singles side of the tournament, where she lost. She’s got awesome fits. There’s a great story there. Maybe we can get into it one day. Cheers to Taylor Townsend, with a honey deuce or two.

Unrivaled Tour Stops and What They Say About WNBA Expansion

Alex: More unrivaled tour stops have been announced, including Boston, Detroit, and a return to Philadelphia. Is Detroit the Midwest one? No, no, Detroit is

Caitlin: Somehow still like East

Alex: Coast.

Caitlin: I got to be honest, unrivaled, your map sucks. Like, the way that they segmented it is really weird. And people are also pissed because they haven’t gone, like, below a certain parallel on, like, the… Right? And so it’s all kind of northern. They did three cities that are essentially, like, right in a row, right between New York, Boston, and Philly. But what I think is interesting is they’re going back to New York, obviously. Boston doesn’t but Boston if you recall was in talks about where the Connecticut Sun should relocate Yeah, yeah, which tells me there there’s maybe interest

Alex: Interest there.

Caitlin: Yeah, Philly Getting a drip an expansion team in a few years Detroit getting an expansion team in a few years So now I feel like we have enough clues, to potentially guess some of these other cities, like Houston, who will get the Connecticut sun next year, right? they skipped over Cleveland and I don’t, so maybe my

Alex: Theory is- Cleveland is the same zone as Detroit? Yeah,

Caitlin: Kind of. I’m not quite sure. We should go look at the map. It’s really, it’s messed up.

Alex: Somebody did like an overlay of an actual United States map and like something’s not right here. It’s not the United States.

Caitlin: Honestly, kind of, you know how, when like Trump took the Sharpie and just extended

Alex: Something out, it’s kind of like that. It

Caitlin: Looks like that. but I think it’s, it’s, it’s fun. I will say people get like excited when they drop their clues. So we should get another tour stop by the end of this week. And then I think there are four more left, five more, So we’ll see if they come to a city near

WNBA Playoff Schedule, WPBL Finals, and NWSL Attendance

Alex: Us. Yeah, we’ll see. WNBA Playoffs schedule has been released, tipping off Sunday, September 27th and running all the way to the finals, which are scheduled to begin Saturday, October 17th.

Caitlin: Yeah, we’re gonna talk about that playoff picture and get you all back and ready for action to restart on the Thursday

Alex: This week. Sorry, I was switching back to see if we have breaking news for this next headline. Oh yeah, do you have any breaking news? Well, let me read the headline and I’ll give you the news we do have. WPBL finals are almost set with top-seeded San Francisco Firebells sweeping bottom-seeded Boston Hunters. LA and New York will play game three tonight. This is Monday night. The current score, top of the seventh inning, 11-11. Oh, wow. All tied up.

Caitlin: Okay, New York, you guys was down five runs when

Alex: We checked right before we started to record. They’ve scored five in the bottom of the fifth, so we might have an update later in the show.

Caitlin: I wonder if Denae Benites is hitting some homers for them. Championship series will begin on the day of episode

Alex: Release. Yes, that is in what to watch as well. Great. We’ll have that.

Caitlin: It’s a best of five series, so looking forward to that and we’ll

Alex: Know, In NWSL news, the NWSL hit two million fans in attendance for matches for the second time in league history, the last being 2024.

Caitlin: Yeah, this makes it the highest attended women’s soccer league in the world. And this is, I think by far likely to be the highest attended season ever because we still have, what are we eight matches or so, seven, eight matches left, something like that, a number of weeks and definitely doable for us to be, exceeding that 2 million, fan Mark. A couple other things of interest, just some player movement, coach movement too. Jameese Joseph, who has suited up for the national team, she leaves the Chicago Stars, good for her, and signs with the Utah Royals.

Alex: That’s an upgrade. That is a big upgrade. That’s

Caitlin: An upgrade. And honestly, we watched the Royals in their game over the weekend, and she has immediate kind of impact or just presence on the field. I don’t, we didn’t watch the full game, She was getting the ball, she was creating chances, like she is impacting the play there in a way that I feel like she was hidden when she played with Chicago. we, as I mentioned, coaching changes, Houston dash part ways with head coach, Fabrice Gautrat, and assistant coach, or she might be the director of coaching. I can’t quite remember Twila Kilgore, the Dasher seven 12 and five so far this season in 12th place. They also had a, they struggled last year, mostly at the beginning of the season and then we’re able to kind of turn things around, but. Obviously a feeling there. We’ve talked a lot about how that team is a little bit younger that you wanna be, you maybe wanna get the right person in, but we don’t know much about the outside of just that coaching change. And then finally, Miss Inevitable herself, Barbra Banda has signed a contract extension with the Orlando Pride through the 2029 season. Good for Orlando, good for

Alex: Banda.

Caitlin: They need some defense. Yeah.

PWHL Lands a US National Broadcast Deal With Scripps Sports

Alex: All right, PWHL have secured a national broadcast deal in the US with Scripps Sports.

Caitlin: Oh, yes. So how long have we talked about this for?

Alex: Yeah, since we started this podcast,

Caitlin: Basically, right? No national broadcast deal here in the States for the PWHL. Canada just blasts that stuff all over the wherever it goes, which is great and really felt that like the next turn for the PWHL needed to be. Yep. National broadcast, right. And so Scripps was the one who, carried all of the playoff games in this past season, the twenty, twenty five, twenty six season. They’re also the ones who did the first ever national broadcast of a PWHL game during the regular season, which was a takeover tour game in Detroit, I believe. So not surprising that this was in the works that they finally got it done. What will be cool is they’re gonna include a game of the week on Saturdays on ION, which is kind of Scripps sports like flagship broadcast station. It also includes Scripps local stations, which happen to be in Detroit and Vegas, which are two of our expansion markets. And then the other thing of note here too is that preseason training camps have, or I should say preseason training We’ve talked about how there’s the World Championships in Denmark. That runs from about, I think it’s November 6th through the 16th. And then training camp starts two days later. It’s like, fly back and you can drop into tryouts. So there will be some scrimmages at the end of November. We’ll see if those are probably not going to be broadcast. There was a note in the article I read about fans potentially being

Alex: Yeah, sometimes they do it with like the NHL where they might have outdoor scrimmages if it’s cold enough or open scrimmages.

Caitlin: We will keep you posted on

Alex: That. Are they still going to be on YouTube?

Caitlin: Oh, it’s a good question.

Alex: Yeah, I was just wondering about that. I

Caitlin: Hope.

Alex: PWHL is reportedly going to announce the first ever All-Star game to be hosted in Toronto.

Caitlin: Yeah, we’ll see. So I don’t know if he was supposed to share this, but Scripps sports president, Brian Lawler reportedly in a panel or something or an interview said like, oh yeah, and we’re going to do an all-star game in Toronto. And the article was like, PWHL has not confirmed this. But that would be cool. It would be awesome. If you think about another thing that sort of legitimizes a professional sports league, it’s usually having those all-star games for what they’re worth right are our big fan engagement opportunity. It’s a good money draw. It can help you bring fans and folks into a market, right? So looking forward to that if that gets confirmed.

Alex: Yeah, we’ll see. Allegedly, as they say.

How Team USA Won the FIBA World Cup Final Against France

Alex: All right, let’s talk about this FIBA World Cup championship game, USA 97, France 79, at the half, France was up 45 to 43.

Caitlin: Yeah, we got the TV turned on, what, probably a couple minutes left in the first, and it was close, right? I think, 18, 17, I remember sitting there and telling you like, no one scored in like a couple, like either team has scored in a couple of minutes. And actually, France, in the second quarter, went up by as many as 14 points. They were shooting lights out from three. Their defense was all over the place. They were creating deflections, creating steals, things like that. Gabby Williams was on absolute fire in the first half. It seemed like she couldn’t miss a shot. I think that we were like, they came out, so there were two pivot points in my view, right? So one of them was we were down five with maybe 30 seconds left to go in the second half. So the pivot point prior to that was… Kara brought the vets back out onto the floor and Jackie Young led our team on a 10-2 run to close that 14 point gap down and we got it down to five. And there’s 30 seconds left. France’s ball. Kara Lawson puts in Angel Reese. Oh

Alex: Yeah yeah I remember this part.

Caitlin: They’re running their offense. Angel Reese gets switched on to Pauline Astier, who’s a guard, right? And Angel Reese gets the steal because she has some of the most active hands I think I’ve ever seen. I think she needs way more respect for her ability to guard smaller players. Just her ability to poke the ball away is crazy. They get this steal, it goes off of SDA out of bounds so the U.S. gets to inbound the basketball. Kara Lawson makes another substitution. She subs in Caitlin Clark. There’s now three seconds or six, it was not a lot of time left, right? Get the ball in, the ball gets passed, I think, into Chelsea Gray who advances it to Jackie Young. Jackie Young passes it to Clark who hits a three to bring France’s lead to two going into the half. And in my mind, those two substitutions, like understanding honestly to a T what your personnel excels at is brilliant.

Alex: Yeah, yeah, it was great.

Caitlin: It’s brilliant. And the other piece of that is like the player’s ability to execute in those moments where this is the thing I need from you.

Alex: Yeah, I think those were great. I mean, obviously very smart. I think I saw a press conference where I was like, I wish I could tell you there was some great speech. Well, we haven’t even gotten to that. That was before halftime. That was right before halftime. OK, we’re going to get to it.

Caitlin: Yes, so then we went, we go into halftime, right? And USA is down two, they haven’t been shooting well, they’re unable to guard Gabby Williams, they’re giving up a lot of threes. What was I telling you while we were watching it? I said, don’t leave your man on the weak side at the three point line. They have proven they can make those, make them drive, make them drive and go for two, but at least you’re going two for two, not three against two, right? Every single time you’re scoring. yeah, and then you, I mean, you can go into what you were saying. It’s like they can’t, they went, they,

Alex: What was it?

Caitlin: They won the third quarter, 30 points to 12. and I think that’s the question everybody had.

Alex: What did you say? What was, what were the coaching points? Like.

Caitlin: And Coach Lawson, I think, was like, I don’t know what I said. And then Stewie was like, no, you said you said some stuff, right? I thought it was probably another like, let this be the last time moment. Yeah. But the quote that I had read that I loved wasn’t from halftime, but it was Stewie to the team. Breanna Stewart is the team captain, was the team captain this year. And she told that group, like, we are the standard. Yeah. You don’t want to be the ones, right? We do not want to be the ones that let the standard slide. Yeah. Right. We’re talking about a team that’s or a program that’s won five consecutive FIBA World Cups, 12 total. Right. And you kind of wonder if maybe it was less of what Coach Kara said at halftime and more of what those vets who are part of setting that standard and maintaining that

Alex: Standard said. Do you think Stewie said we’re the standard? Do you think that she said, I don’t lose? Well, listen to me, I do not lose.

Caitlin: We’ve said it before about the Liberty, right? We’re like, they’re gonna make the playoffs by the skin of Stewie’s teeth. Like they go as she goes, right? And Team USA really went, Stewie was, so consistent in her effort, in her energy throughout this tournament. And we’ll talk a little bit more about that. But I’ve got a couple of players I wanna just talk about. I think we mentioned in favorite, I mentioned in favorite thing, like, the way that this team stuck to the mission, right? The way that this team played relatively unselfish ball, there were moments, right? But I think we had asked ourselves before the tournament started, like how are these superstar players going to handle becoming role players? Because some of, inevitably, some of you have to become role players.

Alex: I think another thing to call out is, Because if they were tuned into the media, it could have been kind of a mess if they were way too tuned into that because a lot of what was going around was toxic, to be honest.

Caitlin: Yeah. Like what?

Alex: Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark don’t like each other. Kara Lawson’s not playing Caitlin Clark because she doesn’t like her because she’s dumb and not a good coach. All these different things that were going on. That’s what I was calling out.

Team USA’s Standout Performers: Reese, Clark, Young, Collier, Stewart

Caitlin: Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I think they, I think, Kara Lawson had a quote, Maybe it was before they before, after their quarterfinal game, she was asked by a reporter what she thought of the media speculation that France was just going to have the US’s number. They hadn’t played yet. But France looked by far the better team like throughout the tournament until that last game, right? More consistent, I should say. And she said something to the effect of like, Well, we don’t play basketball games based on the opinions of others. Yeah. Like we play the basketball. Yeah. And then you can have an opinion. Yeah. Like don’t put that ahead of us actually playing the game. Yeah. And I think that’s emblematic, honestly, of what you were just saying. Yeah. And that’s coming from the head coach. Yeah. So I think we do not, So far, stand for any kind of Coach Kara Lawson slander on this channel. Not at all. If you don’t know her resume, you should go look it up, but she is highly qualified to be coaching Team USA. She played point guard under one of the greatest coaches of all time in Pat Summitt. She’s won every kind of championship you could possibly win. So, and I think she proved, I think she proved that she belongs there. Yeah, I think she did. In this tournament for sure. So, I think a couple clutch performances I want to talk about throughout, and then a few top performers just from the tournament overall. So, starting with Angel Reese, she has just been on, we talked about her prior to the FIBA.

Alex: Past month or six weeks or so, just been on a tear.

Caitlin: Honestly, ever since she missed the layup that would have won the game for the Dream against the Fever, it feels like she’s been unstoppable. Now, in this tournament, she was not going to be a big point producer. She went into a role play position, but when she was on the court, every single time she was on the court, she made an impact. She led the team in field goal percentage and blocks. She was second in rebound steals and free throws made. She probably would have led the team in rebounds if she had been on the court more because she’s just uncannily good at that.

Alex: What I was gonna say, what that tells me about her too is that she is extremely coachable because you could be as big of a star as she is and go into here thinking, I’m gonna do this, this is like what I do, and get told, no, this is your job, and then you do the

Caitlin: Job. And I think we’ve seen that too for her in the W, right? As she knows what her weaknesses are, she is working on them, it comes across in her play. I will be very curious to see if she can continue this streak now coming back into W and into the playoffs. So the second one I want to bring up is Caitlin Clark. I thought that what I saw from her at FIBA is kind of the play that I’ve been craving to see from her in the W in some ways, right? She was more kind of collected. Calm, we saw less of the kind of flopping, arguing with the referees, although there was still a little bit of that. But I think like, it almost felt like she could play a little freer, not having all of that pressure on her, right? And that’s the benefit of playing in these tournaments. And specifically for Team USA, where like, you have 12, 11 other superstars on that team with you, any one of them who can carry the team any given game. And so like the pressure kind of comes off

Alex: Of you a little bit. Yeah, you need to score 25 points a game.

Caitlin: Exactly. Every

Alex: Single game.

Caitlin: And no one did on that team, right? That was actually kind of what I think helped them win. I still feel like there were there were still some tough games, right? There were still some questionable decisions where it was like, why are we making that pass? Why aren’t we making that pass? Defense is definitely still something that she’s working on. Right. But overall, I liked how she played. I liked how she dealt with that team and in particular. The connection between her and Reese on the court is great. Yeah, it’s really great. Jackie Young, just incredible. She was so consistent the whole tournament. She was our most consistent offensive threat. But cooler, even cooler for her is that she made history becoming the first player ever. Take a deep breath because we’re going to go through a lot here, right? To win a high school championship, an NCAA championship, a WNBA championship, a three-by-three Olympic gold medal, a five-by-five Olympic gold medal, and now a FIBA World Cup gold medal. She’s the first player to ever do that. And she’s won multiple WNBA championships, multiple, Gold medals, I believe so Jackie Young’s a winner. Yeah, we’ve also seen her in the W this season really kind of find her stride Offensively and kind of you know that second threat alongside Wilson And she was just really fun to watch I I love watching her play And it was it was a treat to see her out there with that crew And then I, I want to call out our girl, Napheesa, Napheesa Collier, excuse me. She got questioned hard. You want to talk about somebody who shouldn’t have been listening on any media, maybe she didn’t. And the big question was like, can she actually handle physicality? Yeah. Right. And I can see, I can see where that perspective comes from. Yep. But I also see so many little things that Fee does to be in good positions, to break up passes. Her defense, her defensive IQ is sky high, right? And even though she’s not scoring points, again, that’s not her role on this team. Right? And her role on this team is to use her brain, right? And use that defensive IQ oftentimes, right? And hit jump shots when she needs to hit the jump shots, which

Alex: She did. I don’t get that she doesn’t like, everyone always saying she doesn’t have like the physicality and it’s like, do they ever watch her play? Because that’s kind of like her MO in the paint. Getting a little bump.

Caitlin: I think the like, I think some of those folks are like, let’s contrast her with a Wilson or a Boston who are like true post up. So he played the four, right? If you think about the positions, one, two, three, four or five on the basketball court, she played the four for the most part in FIBA. There are some that would argue that fee is would be better as a three like a power forward. Yep. Right or even like a She can shoot right and then she’s not necessarily going to be your like Can I get you in the paint turn and back you’d like you put you on my hip right or on my butt? I don’t necessarily agree with that, because I think we see her do that. Yep. But maybe these are just people who aren’t Lynx fans. Yeah. I don’t get to watch her day in and day out. I thought she was key to their win for sure. And then Stewie, we’ve talked about, I think she set the tone for the whole team. She had a double double in the final. She was the player that Coach Lawson specifically called out in that really tough game against Italy. Yeah. Her shots she was one for nine she shot like crap yeah but she got 11 rebounds she did other things right she just kind of kept that engine that motor going yeah All right, and then I honestly feel like I have to mention other players. Rhyne Howard had crazy, she led the game in steals in the championship with four, but she had a ton of steals throughout. Again, different role for her. Aliyah Boston’s post defense was fantastic in this tournament, and somehow we didn’t see those

Alex: Elbows. No elbows, no elbows.

Caitlin: Yeah, we have some questions. We have some questions about like the transformation

Alex: Of all some of these players.

Caitlin: Right. Yeah. So we’ll be watching for that as we get back into the WNBA. And then Chelsea Gray, like. I think sometimes folks who watch don’t understand how valuable Chelsea Gray is to a basketball team. She does not always score a lot of points, right? She can be flashy, but she’s not always the flashiest. Her ability to pace a game is unmatched.

Alex: Yeah, sometimes it’s about up here.

Caitlin: 100% And she is one of these smartest players up there.

Alex: Yeah

Caitlin: That you can possibly have you actually even saw there were a few times Where you’d see coach Lawson go ask Chelsea while she’s on the bench Like what are you seeing right? Like yeah, like I need your yep What do we need to be thinking about differently? And so she’s a future coach in the media. I feel like also went to Duke So I feel like that’s probably sense helpful Okay. so we, yeah, really enjoyed watching that team play. Really enjoyed those players kind of embracing their roles and it paid off, right? we could have probably talked about all of them. Ka played great when she needed to. Paige, it does look like she had a little knee tweak

Alex: Or something in that last game. I think they said warm up, she hurt her knee a little bit or something, so.

Gabby Williams, Han Xu, and the International Standouts

Caitlin: Yeah. And then you got some minutes from other countries. Yeah, because there are other countries in the world. Gabby Williams, we’ve already talked about her, but 19 points per game, five rebounds per game, four assists, three steals. Fantastic tournament for her. I’m scared of the Golden State Valkyries. I’ve said that before, but I’m even more scared now.

Alex: Hopefully someone else takes care of them for us.

Caitlin: Hopefully she’s not too tired out but Man, if she could bring that back, just kind of elevate it a little bit from her W kind of averages prior to the tournament, that’d be awesome. I loved Han Xu, Plays for the Liberty and the W, but she had a great tournament, 19 points per game, 11 rebounds per game, so averaging that double-double, really kind of the consistent heartbeat for that Chinese team. We mentioned Iyana Martín, she was fantastic for Spain, really young core there, 20 years old. I don’t even know. Part of me, I forgot to look up if she’s gonna be coming over to the W at some point. I would imagine so, but she was great. And then Stewie, of course. I got to wrap this up with a special shout out to the one and the only Tina Charles. Tina Charles was on the desk for the analysis, kind of pregame, mid halftime and post game. Immaculate, it was immaculate. The takes were immaculate, she was honest, she told it like it was, the fits were immaculate, she looked so unbothered.

Alex: Yeah, her body language was just like, I know what I’m saying and it’s right. And it was,

Caitlin: And it was right. And she wasn’t scared to, she wasn’t like pulling punches trying to protect players, but it wasn’t in like a, it wasn’t, it was, Honest honest criticism where it was due and it was honest praise where it was earned, right? can we get her? On a desk in the w, please, please, please, please and thank you and also Quick shout out to brendan glass. She and he is fantastic. He’s we would love him also more in the w he calls a few games here and there but would prefer him to be great others that

WNBA Playoff Seeding Picture Heading Into the Final Week

Alex: We have to listen to sometimes. You all know who we’re talking about. All right, should we dig into these WNBA playoff seedings?

Caitlin: Yes, let’s talk about it.

Alex: All right, you want me to go right into the seedings or did you want to kind of hit some of the idea around the break?

Caitlin: I think the overarching question, right, is like, and we had this with the NWSL, but it’s like, how does this, and even PWHL this season, like how does this break impact these teams? So the words I wrote down here were like injuries, right? You don’t have Paige, like, how is that knee? Dallas is like, you’re going to talk about it, but they’re like fighting to get out of the eighth position. They don’t want to play Minnesota in the first round. Yeah. And then the rest and reload, right? Like, I would be scared. To play A’ja Wilson right now. Because she did get to rest during this break while she was recovering from this injury or what have you. Other players who got to rest in most of the league. It’ll be that’s what I’m going to be watching for right right away this weekend. I think all the teams kind of get their their toes back in the water. And how does that look? Are we telling are we feeling good or was that really disruptive to whatever we had going

Alex: Prior to the FIBA break? Yeah, we’ll see how it goes. All right, playoff seating picture. Ah, I tried to put this in a good order. I think something I wanna do first is essentially in this order, the teams control their own destiny for that specific spot. So the Lynx control for one, Valkyrie control for two, Aces three, Fever four, Dream five, Liberty six, Mystic seven, and Wings eight. Each control their own destiny for that obviously to get anything higher than what they’re at right now They need someone else they need someone else to lose. So if we kind of think about that as we Go into this discussion So the Lynx essentially Have it locked up. They’re at a 96 chance to take the first seed they need they need two here

Caitlin: I’m really trying to not be a Minnesota sports fan right now and be like,

Alex: Darn it. They need to, and they play the Liberty, the Sun, and then the Fever twice to close out the season.

Caitlin: Yeah, it’s not an easy slide,

Alex: Is it? It’s not, but yeah, I mean, you’re hopefully taking one game from the Fever. Dude, I’d love for

Caitlin: Us to just like light it

Alex: Up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So that’s kind of that’s kind of the situation there. The Valkyrie do not control the Destiny, like we said, for that number one. They need to win three to take the number two spot. They would need to win all four and we’d have to lose some, right, for them to take the number one. So these are mostly set. Kind of as we go further down too, it’s gonna get a little bit more convoluted. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Difficult for- Little more independencies. Yeah, yeah. So aces, they control their own destiny for the three spot, but also have to win all four or have the Dream and fever. Lose the game somewhere in there. But they play the storm twice, the Sparks and the Mercury favorable. My goodness. So they I think they got three locked up.

Caitlin: They could probably arrest some players.

Alex: I guess I guess technically they could take two if they win those four and the Valks like lose the game, lose. They probably have to lose.

Caitlin: The Falcons have kind of a, we talked about that when we did the review of the schedule before FIBA and it’s like, Portland is like, they’re a challenger. It’s sort of like, are they gonna wanna just roll over and be like, we’re resetting for the next season. But this, I don’t know, man. It’s like, how do you, I think what’s interesting to think about too is like on these lower, like bottom of the table teams, are there any teams that are actually like throwing it at this point to try and get draft

Alex: Picks?

Caitlin: Or are they like still buckling down and they want to compete?

Alex: Right? And for any of those that are.

Caitlin: I mean, I feel like the Storm have the number one draft

Alex: Pick locked up. For any of the teams that are still in the playoffs and trying to move for seeding. You may or may not move for seeding. You might rest some players.

Caitlin: Yeah.

Alex: But now that you’ve had the rest with FIBA, right? You might not, because you might want them to ramp up now. And so it’s another wrinkle.

Caitlin: Yeah, it’s a wrinkle for sure.

Alex: Okay. So they’re probably, they’re going to sit in the, in the three spot, most likely. now we get into the Fever and the Dream. The fever are currently in that number four spot. they control their own destiny. They play the Tempo, the Mystics and links twice. and so that kind of plays in with the Dream here. They don’t control their destiny for number four, but they have the sun, the sky and the Liberty twice. So if you have the Fever, lose a couple of games in those four and the Dream potentially win three of those, they can, I think, pop up to the four spot, so this gets really…

Caitlin: Yeah, the challenge though between those two teams, right? If you look at their opponents is like the Fever play, the Mystics who are still vying for some positioning, the Lynx by the time they get to those games may not be. May not be. Whereas the Dream are playing the Liberty twice who are absolutely vying for position, right? And so it’s kind of interesting like I think the Fever while they play the number one team twice You wouldn’t normally say this but like they almost have Potentially a better situation. Although I can’t picture the Lynx being like we’re just gonna sit all our starters in our last home, regular season home game of the season, maybe when they go to game bridge. But anyways, I just think that comparison is pretty fascinating. I think the Liberty are gonna be looking to win. They’re gonna want the win more at that point, potentially, than the Lynx. I don’t think Cheryl Reeve will let the Lynx do anything. No. Silly anyway. I think that she doesn’t let them lose. Yeah, she doesn’t.

Alex: Like to lose. All right, and then we get into the six, seven and eight. Liberty: they can control their destiny for number six, but they need to win out, and they play the Lynx, the Tempo, and then the Dream twice, like we just said. So difficult. Very, very difficult to do. That’s one of the harder schedules left. The Mystics only control their destiny for number seven. They have to win four times. They play

Caitlin: I’d love to see the Mystics beat the Fever.

Alex: Yeah. Yeah, that would be that would be the wrinkle that would do it all here. Yeah, this

Caitlin: Whole thing.

Alex: And so they play the sky, the Fever, the sun and the sky. So they have a pretty relatively easy schedule. the Liberty drops them. They pick up all four. You might see some movement there, like we said, and then the wings, they’re already in the number eight spot. They don’t control their destiny for any other spot. They have to like win and hope other people lose. So they could win out here. And if the Liberty and Mystic start dropping games, they might be able to move up to seventh or sixth, but very, very unlikely.

Caitlin: And honestly, like, God, these lower seeds, like you’re battling for like the lesser of the evils. Yeah. Like you’ll play the Lynx, the Valks, the Aces, or the Fever or the Dream.

Alex: Yeah. Like,

Caitlin: You don’t want to play any of those teams

Alex: Anyway. And like at this, I mean, and from the website, I would go off a website called PlayoffStatus, PlayoffStatus.Com, These are like the, this is already the statistically likely seeding. The order that they’re already in is very

Caitlin: Likely to be how they

Alex: End. Very, very likely in the 80% range, like how they’re going to end up. So very likely, but you never know. Anything can happen here. So.

Caitlin: Well, we will be back tuning in to that. I think it restarts on Thursday this week. And like we said before, we’ll be at the Lynx Liberty Game with our girls on Friday.

Alex: We will. It’ll be good.

NWSL Playoff Race and the Parity Argument

Caitlin: All right, transitioning to some women’s soccer topics. We’re gonna talk NWSL first and then just do a quick roundup on the weekend’s action. My

Alex: Gosh. Is it bad that I don’t even, I don’t look at the top like. Quarter of the table when we have it on our sheet here. You look in the middle. I flick at the middle.

Caitlin: Yeah, you got to look at like six or six through 10 or 12

Alex: Maybe. Yeah, 10 to 11 right now,

Caitlin: Yeah. And then we’ll finish this section out with our US Swim National Team roster predictions because we think that’s going to be coming out in the next week or so with those friendlies coming up against Spain. Just really quick to give a sense of the top of the table, we have Gotham FC on 48 points at the top still, Washington Spirit on 43 points in second place, Utah Royals in third with 42 points. They jumped like three spots with a win because everything was so tight in the middle of this group. Yep. San Diego is in fourth with 42, so tied with Utah. I think Utah has them on a tie break, which is why they’re a little bit ahead, if literally exactly the same record. North Carolina in fifth with 39 points. My eyes are, this is really small. We got Portland in sixth with 39 points. I’ll come back to that in just a second. Seventh place, Kansas City with 38, and Seattle rounds out our top eight, which are our playoff spots with 37 points. And just outside looking in, we have LA on 33 points, so four points back from playoffs, and Denver on 31 with Orlando right there at 30. So I think those, we’ve talked about those three teams and then Seattle really being the four that are gonna like have a shot at that last spot. It’s unlikely that those other seven will fall out at this point. So. Over the weekend, we saw Washington lose 3-0 to Boston. We saw Portland draw to Chicago. We mentioned this. They conceded a goal in stoppage time. A header off of a corner kick. It’s just like those kinds of things. That’s the kind of thing I’d be yelling at my team about. You cannot switch off.

Alex: Going back to the Boston-Washington game, I- You can’t switch off. We didn’t watch it. It came up on my phone. I was like, oh, Boston won three nil. And I think you said, didn’t they score them all in like the last-

Caitlin: Oh, yeah. Yeah, their first goal was in like the 81st minute. And then the last two were in stoppage time. I was like, what happened? And we didn’t watch that one. So we don’t know. No idea. There’s perfectly rational reason why you let in two goals in stoppage time. But we’ll go back to this and then I’ll have a couple comments on it. I think the Summit, Denver Summit, battled back from being down to come to a 3-3 draw with LA, which is huge because LA is right ahead of them in the standings. They needed to keep that close. Stole two points from LA if you want to look at it that way. Seattle won over Bay. Seattle needed that win to stay in their eighth position, right, and keep some separation between them and L.A. And Denver. And then Orlando and Casey both had draws over the weekend and San Diego and Utah both had wins. San Diego beat North Carolina, who’s in that top group, which is a big win for them. Here’s the thing. There, I’m gonna frame this in a certain way. So there was, this is a tangent, but the U.S. open was going on over the weekend. And for those of you who may or may not know, superstar Trinity Rodman, who plays for the Washington Spirit, is dating tennis star Ben Shelton. Ben Shelton made it to the final of the Men’s Singles U.S. open tournament, The final match for US Open and Washington Spirits match was at the same time on Sunday. And there was like a bunch of headlines that were like Trinity is missing her boyfriend’s match and it’s like well, yeah, she’s working. Yeah, it’s her job That’s not what I’m commenting on what I am commenting on is a lot of people in Comments on that we’re like they don’t even need her to win to this bottom of the team. Yeah Here’s the thing y’all There is so much parity in the NWSL that any team on any given night can beat any other team Well, they’ve got a win in there somewhere. They are, just as an update for our fans that enjoy when we rip on Chicago this season, they are a minus 40 goal differential for the season. They had two back-to-back losses of six nil last couple weeks now, so.

Alex: Anyways, back to the parity.

Caitlin: Anyways, back to the parity. Outside of Chicago, there is significant parity in this league and you do need everybody firing on all cylinders if you want to get results week in and week out. We saw top team in Washington Lose to Boston last week. We saw the Denver Summit beat Gotham like pretty handily, right? You saw Portland lose it lose a win like literally snatch Defeat from the jaws of victory right against Chicago of all teams And so like, yes, Trinity Rodman and whomever else on their teams are needed for their games so that they can compete. So that’s my thing on that. And that’s where I think like, we were just talking about this with the W, but like, as we progress here into the final stretch

Alex: Of games. So much more important that you’re winning these games. So much more

NWSL Golden Boot Race and the 10-and-10 Watch

Caitlin: Important that you’re winning these games. Or if you’re on the edge of losing, getting the draw, right? These points are so critical at this juncture of the season, and so it’s irresponsible, frankly, to be thinking that teams can sit out a match because they’re playing an quote-unquote easier opponent, right? It’s just asinine. All right, do you want to take us through, we’ve got our fun facts with our 10 and 10 watch and our golden boot race.

Alex: All right, we’ve got Pietra Tordin. Got that right. Seven goals, nine assists.

Caitlin: She has been stuck on that for a while. And honestly, I think some of Portland’s like woes of late are a little bit because they, they haven’t been able to like get her restarted. So sorry, sidebar on that, but she’s been stuck on this list

Alex: Trinity Rodman is at 10 goals and six assists. Didn’t we say last week or the week before that she wouldn’t be getting assists most likely? And then she went and got it. Yeah, yeah. Chloé Lacasse, yeah. Seven goals, 10 assists. Looks like you have here, we have Bethune is also on 10 assists.

Caitlin: She is on tennis assist, she’s not here because she’s not close on goals, she’s got four goals. But Lacasse and Bethune are both tied for the all-time assists record for a single season, which was set by Tobin Heath in 2016, I think. We do play more games now, so just to be clear, but likely that one or both of them will probably be setting a new record this season, which is awesome.

Alex: Then we have her golden boot race, Ashley Sanchez at 19.

Caitlin: Oh my

Alex: Gosh. We have a note here. One off the single season record set by Temwa Chawinga in 2024. I heard isn’t Sanchez have the regular season record right now? And the Temwa Chawinga one is the full season, like playoffs included. I

Caitlin: Didn’t read that. I thought. I will say that Ashley Sanchez has become as inevitable as Barbra Banda. So they lost over the weekend, San Diego 2-1, but go look up Ashley Sanchez’s top bin goal, it was like a beautiful strike. she just like her, the goal must seem like it’s an ocean to her

Alex: Right now.

Caitlin: So kudos to Ashley.

Alex: We’ll talk about her more in a little

Caitlin: Bit. We will.

Alex: I got Barbra Banda at 16, Sophia Wilson at 12. Yeah, I’m getting my names all jumbled in my head. Oh,

Caitlin: Wilson. That’s why I probably, I

Alex: Really need to update this. That’s why it confused me, because I was like, wait, I’m pretty sure it’s Wilson. But I’m also terrible with names, so sometimes I just default to reading it. Sophia

Caitlin: Wilson, I am Gigi’s mom.

Alex: Yeah, yeah.

Caitlin: We always say

Alex: It. Evelyn, I, with, I said that right, right? You did. With 11, Trinity Rodman with 10, Trinity Byars with 10, Temwa Chawinga with 10, Janine Sonis with 10, and what do we got down here? I got

Caitlin: This part. So I think we have potential for more history. In NWSL. There are six players that Alex just read off currently with double digits for goals. Yeah. Right. And that ties the league record. Yeah. But there is a good likelihood that we see that beat. So we have. That

Alex: Was eight, we have eight. Oh, no. So did the record get broke?

Caitlin: The record

Alex: Is broken. The record’s broken. We

Caitlin: Just realized it right now on this recording.

Alex: That’s because

Caitlin: I realized what I meant to say. That’s because Temwa Chawinga and Janine both crossed the nine goal mark this past weekend. But we also have Cat Raider and Mina Tanaka. On nine right now, and very likely, right with the games remaining, that we see more of those goals. So we could be blowing this double-digit goals in a season out of the water, for sure. Sorry about that. My notes aren’t my notes aren’t going just throwing you

USWNT Roster Prediction for the October Friendlies vs. Spain

Alex: Off tonight. I didn’t do my due diligence. All right, let’s talk U.S. women’s National Team roster prediction for October. What is this, I think the 11th and the 13th? 10th and 12th?

Caitlin: 10th and 13th. 10th and 13th, yeah. So we play Spain in both, the first one will be Saturday, October 10th at about, I think 1 30 central time at Audi Field in DC. And then they turn around on the 13th, which is a Tuesday and play Spain at about 6 PM central time in Chester, Pennsylvania in Subaru Park. So great matchup, great World Cup prep. Sing Hayes’s praises when, that’s fun, when this was announced because I’m like, who else is willing to just go, I’m gonna play the world number one team ahead of a World Cup, right? Usually you avoid that a little bit. She’s like, no, I’m putting them into the. Into the fire, right? But we wanted to do the roster prediction because it’s fun. We’ll probably be wrong, but we don’t care. So I there’s a couple of considerations that I want to take us through first, right? And then then we’ll get into the actual name. So the first one is like injuries. Yeah. We have had some really devastating injuries happen to a few players who have been in the rotation in camps this year. And so Emily Sonnett and Olivia Moultrie, we are out, certainly out of the question for these friendlies and likely out of the question for the World Cup. Catarina Macario: I had written earlier today that she’s still not playing for San Diego. It was just announced that she was moved to the SEI, the season-ending injury list, for that club. So she is out for these friendlies, certainly. Rose Lavelle has been out on concussion protocol recently.

Alex: So she returned this weekend

Caitlin: She did return. And so that’s going to be kind of a like, how is that going type of thing? Lindsey Heaps is just getting back to play for Denver. Denver. She had some knee

Alex: Swelling as well. Yeah,

Caitlin: She went right from wrapping up her season with Lyon like, yeah, right into with no break right into summit play. So in play, I think she played like a game and then it was like, no, we’re not we didn’t get to see your life. Yeah. And then Lilly Reale, she had gotten hurt in She Believes. I think, I thought I had seen she had broken like a finger or something. That’s what

Alex: I was remembering. I thought it was a foot from what I read. It was

Caitlin: A foot from She Believes, but I

Alex: Was remembering a different interior report. I have somewhere in her notes. She’s played like nine games and subbed in on one, so she’s been around.

Caitlin: Okay, and then Sam Coffey had been announced that she was having some scoping done to her knee back in May. The WSL just started,

Alex: So she’s probably using back in the minutes. She subbed in late for two games, for the two games that they’ve played so far, so.

Caitlin: So that one, it could be, we’ll see. Other considerations here. So lots of injuries, unfortunately, will, and that will be something to really be watchful, mindful of, I should say watching and mindful of in the coming months. other considerations, European club players are just starting their seasons. They’ve literally had two match weeks so far. And by the time we get to that international window, they’ll have had maybe five. So they’re kind of just in early season form, whereas our NWSL players are late season form. That’s always an interesting balance to strike. You have this as the last window before qualifiers in November. What that says to me is I don’t see Hayes making any like big shifts to who she’s brought in if they are healthy, right? I just think at this point you’re probably not gonna be changing that group too much given that she’s been relatively consistent so far this year. This is also our fifth window ahead of the 2027 World Cup so we have this one qualifiers and then there’s OK, so who’s playing Spain? We’re going to take this by positions on the field, and we’re going to do a little we’ll have a little bit of points of comparison to the June friendliest roster. So at goalkeeper, I do have Claudia Dickey and Mandy McGlynn coming back in. I kind of think those are the one and two right now for Emma Hayes. Fallon Tullis-Joyce has been in the mix, but she also had some injury. She got pulled off the roster in June because of some injury.

Alex: Her last game this past week, she led in five from what I saw, so.

Caitlin: Yes.

Alex: Not a great.

Caitlin: Yes, so they had brought, with that injury back in June, they had brought Jane Campbell in, and I do think I think Campbell’s an interesting choice. And I would say that’s probably who they’ll bring in because she brings veteran leadership. She’s been a part of this program for quite some time. And she’s she plays well. She’s she’s got a very kind of. Kind of aggressive, like, throw my body around style, and I think it adds some energy.

Alex: But she is a vet, so do you maybe bring in a Tullis-Joyce to say, like, get some experience here, at least even just in the arena?

Caitlin: I think the only way you do that is if she is not certain on Dickey or McGlynn being her number one, which at this point I think you’re saying, I’m taking my shot on the younger ones here, the ones who don’t have this level of international experience. I need a veteran goalkeeper who has been to a senior side international tournament to help. Build these players and can do the job if need be. Defenders, we’ve got Emily Fox, Gisele Thompson, Tierna Davidson, Kennedy Wesley, Tara Rudd. I really hope Naomi Girma. Yeah, yeah, I really do. She has been out for quite some time with injury, I think like a calf thing’s been going on for her. And I’m just reading your notes here and it’s like, it doesn’t seem like you have an update from club play from this year for Girma.

Alex: No, I do not have that, unfortunately.

Caitlin: The additional two, so Sonnett is out, right? Sonnett is the one in the, from the June list that like for sure will not be there. And then my question mark is Avery Patterson, and Lily real, right? I think that, Avery Patterson. Played really well or like was very effective against Brazil. Very physical style of play. I think potentially. There’s been some misses in the play for a club at Houston. Yeah. And so I’ll be curious if she gets brought in. She is certainly an option. Lilly Reale, I honestly haven’t seen her play a ton

Alex: From a club perspective, so I’m curious what you’ve. I looked up some stats today. She’s played nine, subbed in on one. I couldn’t find too many stats though. Well yeah, she’s a defender. Yeah, I know, but they don’t have any defensive stats to really pull in, so you don’t get any, you have to actually watch those games to understand what she’s been doing, and we haven’t, so.

Caitlin: Yep, exactly. so I think the check is on, we have Fox Thompson, Davidson, Wesley, and Rudd, which gives us five, typically you carry eight. So if Girma is healthy, that leaves you with two slots. So that probably is likely that it’s real and, and Patterson, right? Along in Girma is taking us on its place. there’s been a couple other names in the mix in the past, but again, Emma is going to be leaning much more towards consistency at this stage. OK, midfielders. Croix Bethune, I’ve got Lindsey Heaps, Rose Lavelle, Jaedyn Shaw, Claire Hutton, Sam Coffey,

Alex: If she is kind of getting

Caitlin: Back up to fitness. Lily Yohannes and. Ashley

Alex: Sanchez. My only notes on this was yes, on Sanchez, I think you have to.

Caitlin: I and Sanchez would be taking Moultrie’s spot from the June Friendlies. I don’t see how you don’t bring her in.

Alex: Yeah, she’s on a tear.

Caitlin: I just, it would seem odd to not give her a shot.

Alex: Yeah.

Caitlin: Right, and she’s been in the mix too. It’s not like she’s new to the US Women’s National Team like someone else I’m gonna mention here in a second. She’s played for this team before. She’s played in these big tournaments. So she also brings a little bit of that veteran presence, right? She’s been out of it for a little bit, but I would be shocked to not see her get a call. And then from a forward position, we have Michelle Cooper. Sophia Wilson, I got it right here. Trinity Rodman, Ally Sentnor, Alyssa Thompson, Mallory Swanson. And then I put Pietra Tordin. Yeah. like I said, she was playing really, really well for the Thorns up until a couple of weeks ago. It’s like the production a little bit has started to slow down. I think she could be an interesting ad. She’s got some momentum, right? I think with this group, who you’re leaving out is Emma Sears, who has been playing for Racing Louisville, who we also could say is having an atrocious

Alex: Season. She’s got seven goals and five assists though.

Caitlin: Sears production has been good. I have not seen her translate any type of club production into the minutes she gets on the national team. Now, we just spent a whole bunch of time talking about how players’ roles change when they are playing club versus national team when we talked about basketball. So, I’m not Emma Hayes, right? Emma Hayes is very high on Emma Sears. And so she could get brought back into the mix. But part of me is like, do you experiment, right? We’re not really experimenting on defense. Girma is gonna be in that lineup if she’s healthy, right? We have one experiment in the midfield. It’s like, do you just like

Alex: Give it a little extra? When I was looking at your list here, I kind of thought with the midfielders for an experiment. Do some

Caitlin: Experimenting. The other thing that I think is funny is Michelle Cooper in those Brazil friendlies back in June played a little bit of right back. And I thought she was great. And I think we should try that more often. Yeah, yeah. Just have some versatility back there. No, all kidding aside, I think this is a really interesting roster, again, I don’t think there’s going to be any huge surprises, I think Emma probably has in her mind at this point who she wants to be bringing to Brazil, it is literally just going to be a matter of can they stay

Alex: Healthy. It does, it does get interesting to like, as these injuries have accumulated, like who, who’s up next, who are the people who may be able to come out of some of these injuries and be back and like, when do they fit, can they fit back in, when do they fit back in and all those, like the, so much of scenario planning for Emma that is also out of her control, like it’s not happening on her pitch, it’s happening on other pitches, which is just a totally different ball game.

Caitlin: Yeah, she’s got her depth charts and then she’s got like scenario plan, right? If this happens, then we go to this group or whatever it is. So I think as US women’s national team fans, what we have to hope for is that, no major injuries to the players who have not already had him. And that we get to see Ashley Sanchez back in there, red,

Alex: White, and blue, frankly.

Caitlin: I would be a fan of that.

Alex: I think it will be the biggest surprise, non-surprise, if she’s announced. I

Caitlin: Feel…

Alex: If she gets announced to the team.

Caitlin: Yes, yes, I really hope she does. I don’t know how you can be playing. I don’t know how you can play better than she is right now. And- Not get called up. The only thing, the only reason she wouldn’t, and I trust Emma Hayes to be very, very clear. The only reason you wouldn’t bring her in is one, there’s some known chemistry issue Not willing to deal with that or two based on the other personnel you have You just like that just doesn’t feel right into your tactical game plan. Yeah that kind of scoring I don’t know a lot of football coaches who would say no to somebody who can just honestly kind of score it on a whim, but we’ll see.

Alex: We’ll see how it goes.

Caitlin: Again, we trust in Emma.

What to Watch This Week

Alex: All right, what to watch.

Caitlin: Do it.

Alex: Let’s do it. We’ve got just a few called out here for each sport. Actually only a couple sports this week. I probably need to get back into the NCAA rhythm, because I did not pull anything out this week. Soccer and volleyball. Yes, gymnastics.

Caitlin: Prix starts. Oh no, that’s in the winter. I’m getting confused.

Alex: WNBA we’ve got the game we will be at New York Liberty versus Minnesota Lynx Friday at 6 30 p.M. On ION try to catch us. We’ll be up in the nosebleed. So probably not. Phoenix Mercury versus Dallas wings Saturday at noon on CBS and Paramount plus. And then, and I’m sorry, the Phoenix Mercury Dallas wings game. That was the best game on Saturday. everything else is very much like, okay. and then on Sunday, we’ve got the Washington mystics at the Indiana fever three PM league pass and local broadcast there. Nice. Yeah, that’d be a good one. NWSL, we’ve got San Diego versus Kansas City on Friday at 9 p.M. I think San Diego only plays Friday 9 p.M. Games when they’re home. I really think they do. So, that’s on Prime, if I didn’t say that. North Carolina Courage versus Gotham FC on Saturday, 5.30 P.M. On ION. See if Sanchez

Caitlin: Can put a couple goals on Gotham.

Alex: And then we got the Utah Royals versus Angel City Sunday at 6 p.M. On NWSL,

Caitlin: You guys, there are no bad games in the NWSL right now. They’re all important.

Alex: All right, we are gonna go into the WPBL. The only

Caitlin: One that wouldn’t be worth maybe watching is if Racing Louisville played Chicago Stars.

Alex: Yeah, we might watch it to see how bad it gets. Sorry about that, guys. That’s, shouldn’t be making that much fun of them. All right, we got the WPBL Championship. Starts on Wednesday the night this comes out. We are going to have San Francisco playing. Oh, yeah. Los Angeles, Queens. They won tonight against New York 15 to 11.

Caitlin: Oh, wow.

Alex: All right.

Caitlin: That’s a shit ton

Alex: Of runs. A lot of runs. And that’s seven Indians a play. We had so the first one is Wednesday night, 6 p.M. Game two is Thursday at 6 p.M. Game three is Saturday at 6 p.M. And then game four, if needed, will be 2 p.M. On Sunday. Game five, if needed, will be 6 p.M. Next Tuesday.

Caitlin: These

Alex: Are all on ESPN Select. And if you’re not in this country, on YouTube.

Caitlin: To our Filipino friends, you can watch on YouTube.

Momentum and Setbacks

Alex: All right, so let’s hit these momentum and setbacks.

Caitlin: You got any?

Alex: I think, I mean, I already kind of like talked about my setback and it was just all of the nonsense on threads about social media, about Kara Lawson, not playing someone’s favorite player enough, or not playing the young kids enough, or she’s not qualified and when they haven’t looked up her, what she’s done. And again, this could be another motto of our podcast, but threads is insane.

Caitlin: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that’s again, that’s like. Somewhat randos, right? Just talking, talking their mouths. Yappen, as they say. Yeah, I and I do think it’s disappointing. But again, we’ve talked a lot about like the new fan culture, too. And so like folks who are fans of a certain player, right? They don’t they don’t know who Kara Lawson is. They don’t know that she played for Pat Summitt, that she’s the head coach of the Duke Women’s Basketball program, right? And that she’s won so many things. They also don’t understand watching how she coaches what she’s doing, right? Yeah, I don’t I don’t need to defend her anymore. I will pile on that, though. And this is an actual media person, unfortunately. In the last week or so, I guess, since the FIBA tournament started, former ESPN broadcaster Linda Cohn has a podcast or something. I don’t know where this happened, but she set it out into the world that she was just randomly speculating to herself into a microphone about why A’ja Wilson was not gonna play in FIBA. She was kind of a late scratch, right? And her claim was essentially that she believed that A’ja might be jealous of Caitlin Clark getting the spotlight at FIBA. Oh, there’s a lot of things wrong with that statement. One, A’ja Wilson does not need to be jealous of anybody. A’ja Wilson has accomplished plenty and should be regarded with respect in that. Yeah, that way, too. Linda Cohn actually spent a good amount of her time in broadcasting, fighting for, women to have a space in sports, right? Like just to put it really simply. You making unbased, like unbased in fact, claims about the relationship that one woman, female athlete might have to another female athlete, making them seem jealous or catty and using all of those adjectives that are often used to describe women in a demeaning way is irresponsible. You have no facts to base that off of. You don’t know what her injury was. You are not part of her care team. She, if Asia was healthy, she would have been there. There had to have been something going on, right? And then third of all, Just because, Caitlin does get put on a pedestal by the media does not mean that every other player is jealous of her. That is, that is not, that is not, again, not based in fact. And so we have to stop. Having these kinds of narratives in actual media where there is overtly sexism and misogyny in the commentary and covertly or underlying racist undertones to how we are talking about these players. So. That is my setback. It’s really frustrating.

Alex: Yeah, it’s annoying too, because as, obviously we don’t have an insider insider view, but we watched enough to know that that’s not who Asia is. Nope. At least from what’s been put out there and what we see behind the scenes, things like that. She was actually further entrenched into this whole ecosystem and decided to come out and say this, it’s insane.

Caitlin: It’s rage-baity,

Alex: It’s grifty, whatever it is. You’re just trying to get clicks, you’re yapping. You’re yapping, right? Like we know, we know we could come out with a podcast where we just blaze a certain player or talk crap about a certain player, and guess what? Ten times as many clicks, ten times as many followers. And we don’t do that because that’s not.

Caitlin: That’s not why

Alex: We enjoy sports. It’s also not how you prop up women’s sports in particular. It’s not how you build a following of people who enjoy watching women play sports.

Caitlin: Agree. I actually want to use that to lead into my momentum. So speaking of things that have been blown out of proportion in the media, if you don’t know, there is a lot of talk about the relationship that Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese have. And I think we talked already about how their chemistry on the court really shined during FIBA. There were a lot of people online saying I would love to see them on a WNBA team together, right? And this narrative really started back in when both of them were in college and there was a lot of back and forth between the two of them. LSU ended up winning the national And it created this narrative that also has racial undertones. And somehow, there’s this whole story that the two of them are complete and utter enemies. Essentially, if you’re a fan of one, you cannot be a fan of the other. It’s not possible. Here’s what I love. One, like I said, we got to see their chemistry on the court. They play just fine together. Yeah, they do. Two, Caitlin was asked in a post-game interview, basically like, are her and Angel friends now? And she was like, okay, I’m gonna do her response and then I have an editorializing to do on that question. “We’ve always been friends. Don’t do that,” she said to the reporter. “Don’t do that.” And she walked away. Because why are you asking that question? Do you ask men that question when you are interviewing them post-game? What the flip are we doing? And I love that she just shut it down. Smile on her face, answered really succinctly, and just was like, no. We don’t do that. We don’t do that here. Also, just some of the stuff with them goofing in the locker room, Caitlin spraying herself in the face with a bottle of champagne.

Alex: Oh, they’re already blaming Sue Bird on that one.

Caitlin: Oh, my God. I thought it was funny and she, I don’t know, just whatever. We have to knock off these narratives where we’re making assumptions about their personal relationships.

Alex: And it goes back to the, it’s all because of the new fan. Why do you think there was such this intense competition in college between them? And why do you think they play so well now? Is because they’ve been in the system together for so long. That’s why they play together so well. Like, it’s not like this is the first time they’re playing together.

Caitlin: Yes, they have played together for many, many years in Team USA program, so. So that’s my momentum is like, I think we got to see a side of the relationship between these superstar players. We got to see a side of their on-court chemistry, some of the off-court antics For some of those players, we don’t always get to see yeah page You’re always gonna know what but she’s up to no good basically But like you don’t see that always from Caitlin.

Alex: Yeah as

Caitlin: An example.

Alex: Yeah, and

Caitlin: I like it.

Alex: Yeah, I like it great My moves

Caitlin: Girl.

Alex: My momentum is Think Ashley Sanchez. I think she’s got to make it on that on that team

Caitlin: Come on, Emma.

Alex: I just, I wanna see it. And if she goes to the friendlies, doesn’t score a goal.

Caitlin: That’s okay.

Alex: That’s okay. Like, I need to see it. Give

Caitlin: Her a look.

Alex: Cause she might score three.

Caitlin: Give her a

Alex: Look.

Caitlin: Yeah. All right.

Alex: All right. Catch us on Instagram, threads, YouTube at RTG underscore pod, RTGpod.Com and raising the game pod at gmail.Com.

Caitlin: Yeah. Is it weird that right there? I wanted to say, do you want to read us out? We’re not quite there.

Alex: We don’t have producers. We don’t have

Caitlin: Producers or editors or anything

Alex: Like that. Produced, edited everything by Alex Tripp.

Caitlin: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. All right. We appreciate you being here. talk to you next week.