For Caitlin Clark, the wait is finally over.
In just a few days, the Indiana Fever star will have her first game action in eight months, playing in the FIBA World Cup Qualifying Tournament with USA Basketball in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
“I think it’ll probably take me a second to knock a little bit of the rust off,” Clark said over Zoom from USA Basketball camp in Miami. “I’ll probably be a little bit nervous, which I usually don’t get nervous, but that probably just will come from, you know, I haven’t really played basketball in a while. I’m sure after the first minute of running around on the court, I’ll be just fine. But more than anything, just really excited.”
The Indiana Fever star hasn’t been in true live game action since July 2025, when she injured her right groin against the Connecticut Sun in Boston.
Injuries plagued Clark’s entire sophomore season, limiting her to just 13 games in 2025. She suffered a quad injury in training camp, suffered a separate strain in the same quad a week into the season, strained her left groin in June, then her right groin in July. She also suffered a sprained ankle, one she later called “one of the worst sprains I’ve dealt with,” in August while rehabbing from that groin injury.
That sprained ankle ultimately didn’t allow her to adequately test out her groin to see if she could return before the end of the Fever’s season. She spent the early offseason aggressively rehabbing her groin and ankle, and said at USA Basketball’s camp in December that she was back to 100% health.
Still, she hasn’t had an opportunity to play true 5-on-5. She has played 3-on-3 and 5-on-5 in practice, but it isn’t the same as live play against true opponents.
“It’s definitely been a while since I played a game,” Clark said. “Obviously, I played in the camp we had in December, and then doing everything I can to simulate as much live play in training and pick up and things like that. But nothing quite emulates this type of environment.”
Finally, after eight months, Clark will be back on the court. And she feels better than ever.
“I know how much work and how much time I put in to make sure my body’s as healthy as it can be, and to get back not only to a point where I feel like I’m myself, but I feel like I’m even better than where I was at the beginning of last season,” Clark said. “I started off the season really well before I was hurt, and tried to play through being hurt. So more than anything, just excited to be out there, to be surrounded by a lot of really good players.”
The FIBA World Cup Qualifiers will be Clark’s long-awaited first appearance on the USA Basketball Senior National Team.
She played in multiple junior tournaments throughout high school and college, winning the 2017 U16 FIBA Americas Championship and the 2019 and 2021 U19 FIBA World Cups. She was also invited to Senior National Team training camp as a senior in college in April 2023, but could not attend because it was in the same week as the Final Four.
“The amount of people that make it from the U16 team to eventually get to make their debut on the senior national team is a very, very, very small number, so getting to play in just this World Cup qualifier, obviously, is a huge honor within itself,” Clark said. “… everybody knows what an honor it is to wear USA across their chest. Obviously, there’s quite a few more steps to reaching the Olympics, and you have a lot till we get to that point, but obviously that’s certainly my goal.”
Clark is the only Fever player representative on the qualifying roster; Aliyah Boston had to pull out of the tournament after she suffered a right lower extremity injury in Unrivaled on Feb. 27. Fever coach Stephanie White will be in Miami and Puerto Rico as an assistant on USA Basketball coach Kara Lawson’s staff.
USA Basketball has already qualified for the World Cup in Berlin, Germany, in September, but it still participates in the qualifying tournament. Because of that, USA Basketball opted to give opportunities to younger players to get experience on the Senior National Team for the first time. Some top players, including A’ja Wilson, Breanna Stewart, and Sabrina Ionescu, are not on the qualifiers roster, but they will likely be on the World Cup roster in September.
Lawson will likely use the tournament to test out multiple different starting lineups and rotations mixing the young players with Olympic gold medalists like Jackie Young or Chelsea Gray. Paired with the fact the team is playing five games in seven days from March 11-17, there could be some games where Clark plays minimal minutes.
“I think there’s still a lot for me to learn,” Clark said. “There’s a lot of really great older players here that have won gold medals that I can learn from and be surrounded by. I think that’s the fun part about USA, too. There’s multiple people that have done this before, and you can learn from them.”
Chloe Peterson is the Indiana Fever beat reporter for IndyStar. Reach her at capeterson@gannett.com or follow her on X at @chloepeterson67.
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Caitlin Clark will play first game in 8 months after injury. She feels ‘a little bit nervous’
Reporting by Chloe Peterson, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
