Mohegan — Jennifer Rizzotti first started coaching for USA Basketball in 2006 as an assistant for the FIBA Americas U18 championship held in Colorado Springs. The team, featuring future UConn All-Americans Tina Charles and Maya Moore, won gold.

“Intoxicating,” Rizzotti said of her entire USA Basketball experience, the most recent addition to that resume coming at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris as the head coach of the bronze medal-winning 3x3 women’s basketball team.

“I think it’s just like you’re around something that the expectation is so high,” Rizzotti said, “but also the preparation and the selflessness is equally as high.

“Every player shows up and they’re the best version of themselves, every coach shows up and is the best version of themselves. You want to be around that, as a human, as a coach, as a competitor, and so I’ve always done whatever I could to stay involved.”

Rizzotti, the former UConn women’s basketball great and now the president of the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun, spoke Tuesday from Sun practice at the Mohegan Tribal Community Center.

The session marked the return of the Sun’s Alyssa Thomas from her stint on the U.S. women’s 5x5 team which won its eighth straight gold medal. Thomas’s fiancee, the Sun’s DeWanna Bonner, was also in Paris, as were Rizzotti and assistant coach Abi Olajuwon, who was the assistant coach for the Nigerian women’s team.

Thomas, Rizzotti and Olajuwon were each presented with a colorful bouquet of balloons to commemorate their Olympic appearances. The Sun begin the second half of their season Friday in Dallas.

Anyway, as Rizzotti tells it, she had just finished coaching at the 2020 games in Tokyo, an assistant under South Carolina’s Dawn Staley for the gold medal-winning 5x5 team. Rizzotti was named to be the chair of the 5x5 committee for the Paris Olympics when she was approached about getting involved with the 3x3 team, as well.

She said yes.

“I always say yes,” Rizzotti said.

And so she went about teaching herself a whole new game.

In 3x3 basketball, the game is played half-court with a 10-minute game clock and a 12-second shot clock. The first team to 21 points wins or the team that is ahead when time expires. Teams receive one point for field goals and free throws and two points for a shot behind the arc.

The sport debuted at the Olympics in Tokyo, with the U.S. women winning gold.

One interesting caveat: coaches can’t coach during the games.

“I’m in the stands for the 3x3 games, so I coach them literally right up until they walk out on the court, then I go up to my seat,” Rizzotti said. “Then I see them after. They have to do it themselves.

“What people don’t understand is I’m teaching them to play a pretty much new game and then I’m pretty much teaching them how to coach themselves because in 5-on-5 you literally never are in that scenario. You have to make your own adjustments. You have to run your own plays. You have to change your strategy. You’ve always had a coach telling you how to do that.”

Rizzotti, formerly the head women’s coach at Hartford (1999-2016) and George Washington (2017-21), said that to learn to coach the new game, she had to immerse herself in it.

While she was told she could just coach the Women’s AmeriCup and the World Cup, she attended a number of FIBA 3x3 Women's Series events, as well, and helped with scouting and the actions she wanted as a focus.

“The more I was in practices and got prepared for it, the better I got,” Rizzotti said. “It’s hard to just learn it. You kind of had to be in the middle of it.”

The U.S. Olympic 3x3 team consisted of Cierra Burdick, the Tennessee graduate currently playing overseas; Hailey Van Lith of Texas Christian University; and the WNBA’s Dearica Hamby (Los Angeles Sparks) and Rhyne Howard (Atlanta Dream).

Cameron Brink, a rookie this season with the Sparks, tore her ACL in June and was forced to miss the Olympics.

The U.S. started 0-3 in Group A, with losses to Germany (17-13), Azerbaijan (20-17) and Australia (17-15) before rallying with wins over Spain (17-11), France (14-13) Canada (18-17 in overtime) and China (14-12) to advance.

Rizzotti’s team beat China again in the quarterfinals (21-13) on Saturday, Aug. 3 — having played consecutively Tuesday through Saturday — advancing it to Monday’s semifinals, with the duration of the event taking place outdoors at the famed Place de la Concorde in Paris.

Spain defeated the U.S. 18-16 in overtime in the semifinals, matching the American team with Canada for the bronze medal game. Van Lith led the way with six points and Hamby and Burdick made plays late for the 16-13 victory to clinch a medal. Germany took the gold.

“The hardest is not having a lot of time,” Rizzotti said, “because, once again, you can’t really practice 3-on-3. Your practice is playing and so, as you saw, we had a tough time early in the tournament because it was really our first time playing together.”

Rizzotti switched gears to watch the 5-on-5 team secure gold, invested in the team as a committee member and as the Sun president seeing Thomas compete as an Olympian for the first time. She also watched fellow UConn alum Diana Taurasi pick up her sixth consecutive gold medal.

“It’s just emotional,” Rizzotti said of Taurasi. “I followed her career from the beginning. I know what she’s meant not just to women’s basketball but to USA Basketball. To know she’s accomplished something that no other team athlete has ever accomplished is unbelievable.”

Said Rizzotti of her lengthy affiliation with USA Basketball: “I’ve been on committees, I’ve been on coaching staffs, I did the 3x3 and then this 5-on-5 committee. I’m just proud to be a small part of it but I’m always honored when they call and ask me to do something for them.”

v.fulkerson@theday.com