Team USA plays Hungary in the quarterfinals of the FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup on Thursday morning, and American viewers will need an alarm.
How to watch
USA vs. Hungary — Quarterfinals
Thursday, Sept. 10 — 5:30 a.m. ET / 11:30 a.m. local
Berlin Arena, Berlin
TV: TNT and truTV
Streaming: HBO Max. TNT also streams through YouTube TV and DirecTV.
Every game of the tournament: Courtside 1891 via DAZN — $11.99 a month or $44.99 for the year, live and on demand, English commentary with Spanish on select games.
Semifinals are Saturday. The third-place game and final are Sunday.
The rest of Thursday's quarterfinals
5:30 a.m. — USA vs. Hungary
8:30 a.m. — France vs. the Puerto Rico–China winner
11:45 a.m. — Belgium vs. Germany
2:45 p.m. — Australia vs. Spain
Caitlin Clark has not started a game
She has come off the bench in all three group games, and the results have swung hard.
Against China she had 14 points and 11 assists in 25 minutes. Against Italy she scored one point on 0-for-6 shooting with one assist and two turnovers, and sat the final seven minutes of a 55-52 win — the first time in her college or professional career she failed to make a field goal. Against Czechia she had nine points and seven assists in a blowout.
Coach Kara Lawson told OutKick she's staying with her veteran starting group for the quarterfinal, saying she likes where the team is. She said the same about Angel Reese and Paige Bueckers, who have also come off the bench.
Breanna Stewart, Napheesa Collier, Kahleah Copper, Chelsea Gray and Jackie Young have started all three.
Hungary is not a walkover
The United States has beaten Hungary four times in four meetings, but the last one was in 1986.
Dorka Juhász plays for the Minnesota Lynx. She had 22 points and 11 rebounds in Hungary's 82-73 win over Korea on Sunday, shooting 8-of-13 with no turnovers and no fouls. She's the reason this team is here.
Virág Takács-Kiss added 14 points and eight rebounds in that game and plays for Valencia in Spain. Kinga Josepovits, an 18-year-old center listed at 6-foot-5, scored the go-ahead basket in the fourth quarter.
Hungary averages 72.5 points a game to the Americans' 84.7, but shoots better from three — 34.8 percent to 29 percent.
The WPBL playoffs are the same two nights
The first professional women's baseball postseason in more than seventy years began Wednesday in Springfield, Illinois.
Wednesday, Sept. 9 — Boston at San Francisco, 8:00 p.m. ET
Thursday, Sept. 10 — Los Angeles at New York, 8:00 p.m. ET
Both are best-of-three semifinals. Every game is on ESPN. Full schedule, standings and how to watch here.
Why this is on a baseball site
Clark has a documented history with the game.
She threw a ceremonial first pitch at Wrigley Field before a Cubs-Cardinals game in August 2022, while she was still at Iowa.
She's turned up at Yankee Stadium and at Oracle Park, where she sat near the home dugout and called the ballpark a bucket-list stop.
She tried play-by-play on TikTok during a Phillies-Brewers game with teammate Lexie Hull and concluded that calling baseball is hard work — Phillies broadcaster Tom McCarthy invited her into the booth afterward.
She posted during extra innings of the World Series.
https://twitter.com/CaitlinClark22/status/1984828031811113236
She is also playing during the arrival of ten new professional women's leagues since 2024. The New York Times counted them last week: hockey, softball, two volleyball leagues, three basketball ventures, lacrosse, rugby, baseball, and a flag football league coming next year.
The Times led that story with Denae Benites, the New York Heights catcher, hitting a home run over the left-center fence at Robin Roberts Stadium. Benites finished the WPBL regular season hitting .552 with 11 home runs in 15 games. She plays Thursday night.
The video game noticed first
NBA 2K27 shipped last week with Clark on the global Deluxe Edition cover — the first WNBA player on a premium NBA 2K cover — alongside Victor Wembanyama.
The game also added a playable FIBA World Cup mode, where MyPLAYER characters can leave their club season to represent their countries. And it opened MyPLAYER creation to female characters for the first time, in a fully co-ed online environment where height, weight, wingspan and ratings drive everything regardless of who you built.
Both cover athletes spent the launch window playing for their national teams. Wembanyama was in Belgrade and Orléans for FIBA World Cup qualifiers two weeks ago. Clark is in Berlin.
Nobody had to be argued into any of this. You build a lineup, she's available, and three quarters later you've watched her shoot next to Bam Adebayo and a vintage Gail Goodrich. The interest arrives after the fact.
That's roughly what the WPBL is banking on too, and what MLB has quietly encouraged without owning any of it — Rob Manfred taped a welcome for the league's first draft, the Red Sox hosted the opening stop of its promotional tour at Fenway, and the league plays by MLB's modern rules, pitch clock and extra-innings runner included.
Schedule, rosters and statistics via FIBA and the WPBL. Lawson quote via OutKick. League count via The New York Times.