What beef? Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark are having fun building chemistry as USA teammates
What beef? Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark are having fun building chemistry as USA teammates
Tracy BrownThu, September 10, 2026 at 9:56 PM UTC
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Former college rivals Angel Reese, left, and Caitlin Clark say they are having fun playing together on Team USA.(Ebrahim Noroozi / )
The Caitlin Clark-Angel Reese connection has been strong during the women’s FIBA World Cup.
The college rivals turned teammates on the U.S. national team showed off their growing chemistry in Team USA’s blowout victory against Hungary on Thursday in Berlin. The Americans knocked out their quarterfinal opponents 108-56, notching the team’s 34th consecutive win in World Cup play since 2006.
“We’ve played against each other so many times, so I’m sure we know each other’s game like the back of each other’s hand,” Reesesaid when asked after the game about playing with Clark. “Just easily dishing it off to her. She dishes it off to me. She knows my spots. I got one to her today, maybe two. So it’s fun. We just continue to build chemistry because we know we’re gonna be USA teammates for a while.”
The strength of Clark and Reese’s two-person game was on full display Thursday. Clark assisted on six of Reese’s nine points, and Reese returned the favor during the third quarter. After securing a steal, she hit Clark for an easy transition layup.
Read more:Atlanta's Angel Reese breaks yet another WNBA record in Dream's victory against Lynx
Reese ended the game with nine points, six rebounds, three assists and two steals. Clark finished just shy of a double-double with 10 points, nine assists, three rebounds and two steals.
Clark also has complimented Reese as a competitor and teammate during the tournament.
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“We’re both fiery, fiery competitors and we want to win and it’s one of the things I really admire about her game,” Clark told the in an interview published Wednesday. “She’s competitive and she has a tremendous motor; like, she has one of the best motors in the league. She works just as hard as anybody on the court. So, it’s been fun to to be able to play with her.”
Clark, who set records at Iowa, and Reese, who won an NCAA championship at Louisiana State, have been household names since their college matchups. Thanks to their intensely loyal — and often vocal — fan bases, that rivalry has been carried into their WNBA careers, where every matchup and interaction invites heightened scrutiny, especially online.
Clark told the AP that many of these stories about her and Reese’s relationship are “false takes.”
“No matter what, there’s always going to be people that create those narratives and say whatever they want to say,” Clark said. “There’s definitely no stopping that and they’re always going to be there.”
Reese and Clark are among Team USA’s young core, dubbed the “young and turnt” crew by teammate Paige Bueckers during training camp in December. The World Cup marks the first major international competition for six of those players: Bueckers, Clark, Reese, Aliyah Boston, Sonia Citron and Kiki Iriafen.
Team USA is set to play Spain in the semifinals on Saturday.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Source: “AOL Sports”
