How 2024 WNBA All-Star Game will have plenty of Notre Dame ties
The Team USA women’s basketball national squad will get a pre-Olympics tuneup against the WNBA All-Stars at Footprint Center in Phoenix on July 20. Notre Dame Fighting Irish fans might have a tough time choosing who to root for.
There are two Notre Dame alums on each side.
Jewell Loyd and Jackie Young are representing the United States in the Olympic Games in Paris later this summer. The games begin for Team USA women’s basketball on July 28. Arike Ogunbowale and Kayla McBride, though, are suiting up for the WNBA All-Star Team.
That makes four Notre Dame alums in the exhibition, which will be televised on ABC at 8:30 p.m. ET. No other university will have more than three. Not UConn. Not South Carolina. Nobody. Just Notre Dame.
Ogunbowale and McBride are each making their fourth appearances as WNBA All-Stars. The former was the All-Star Game MVP in 2021. The All-Stars played Team USA that year, too, and ended up beating the national team 93-85. Ogunbowale led all scorers with 26 points.
This season, Ogunbowale — who said last month she took her name out of the pool of players being considered for Team USA’s Olympic roster — is averaging 23.7 points per game for the Dallas Wings. That’s second in the WNBA behind only A’ja Wilson. Ogunbowale has spent all six of her professional seasons in the Lone Star State where she has a career scoring average of 20.5 points per game in 175 appearances, 170 of which she’s started.
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McBride is back in the All-Star Game for the first time since 2019, meanwhile. This is her 11th season in the WNBA since leaving Notre Dame in 2014. She’s spent the last four with the Minnesota Lynx. She’s averaging 15.8 points per game this season and is a career 14.4 points per game scorer in 315 games played, 311 of which she’s started.
Like Ogunbowale, Loyd and Young are among the best scorers in the WNBA. Loyd is putting up 20.2 points per game for the Seattle Storm, which is the fifth-best mark in the league. Loyd is sitting on 18.7 points per game for the Las Vegas Aces, coming in at eighth in the association.
McBride and Loyd were Notre Dame teammates for two seasons from 2012 through the spring of 2014. The college careers of Ogunbowale and Young overlapped for three seasons from 2016 to 2019. The latter duo won a national title together in 2018 and played for another in 2019.
