Team USA took home silver at the FIBA AmeriCup, falling to Brazil in the championship game, 69-58.

Rickea Jackson led the United States in that game with 17 first-half points. She finished with a game-high 22 points, adding eight rebounds, one steal and a block. LSU star Angel Reese had four points and six rebounds for the squad, which featured a roster full of college stars.

Reese finished the tournament with three double-doubles and 78 rebounds through seven games. Jackson, meanwhile, led Team USA in scoring during the tournament and earned a spot on the All-Star Five.

“All the credit to Brazil, they have a ton of experience,” Jackson said. “They’ve been together for many years and for this USA team to come down here, only being together for two weeks and still making it to the championship game, just says a lot about our toughness and our grit. We’re a very young team, but I feel like we showed we can hang with anybody.”

South Carolina’s Kamilla Cardoso starred for Brazil, scoring 20 points and 11 rebounds in the championship game to help clinch the gold medal for her team.

It was the USA’s second loss to Brazil during the tournament, following a loss during group play. Other than those two games, the U.S. went undefeated in the tournament. Head coach Kamie Ethridge praised her players Sunday, noting that they were part of a “young team.”

“I hope they take away that they shouldn’t back down to anybody. USA Basketball shouldn’t be satisfied with gold, that’s just in us. We need to win gold,” she said. “But we put this team in a position that was almost an impossible thing that we were asking them to do, and they almost did it anyway.”

Reese called it a “blessing & honor” to play for Team USA during the offseason before she gears up for a title defense with LSU.

“Such a blessing & honor to play with this team!” she wrote. “Even though we fell short, I loved every moment of being able to represent my country! BACK TO WORK!”

LSU star Angel Reese leads the eight players selected for the Team USA roster for the 2023 Women’s AmeriCup.

“DELAYED BUT NOT DENIED. THANK YOU GOD,” Reese wrote on Twitter in celebration of her selection.

A leader for LSU’s 2023 national champion squad, Reese takes another step in her career on the international stage. She previously had been a finalist for Team USA’s youth teams, as she outlined on her Twitter account, but made the cut this time around.

“NEVER GIVE UP ON THINGS YOU WANT IN LIFE,” she wrote. “TIME TO BRING HOME GOLD.”

Reese is joined by a bevy of other college stars for the tournament, which is held every two years and features teams from 10 different countries in North America, South America and the Caribbean. Team USA has won the AmeriCup four times, including at the last two tournaments in 2019 and 2021.

South Carolina’s Raven Johnson, Tennessee’s Rickea Jackson and Jewel Spear, UCLA’s Lauren Betts and Charisma Osborne, USC’s Rayah Marshall and Michigan’s Laila Phelia also made the squad. An additional five finalists were selected for training camp – Texas A&M’s Janiah Barker, Illinois’ Makira Cook, Columbia’s Abbey Hsu, Oregon’s Chance Gray and LSU’s Aneesah Morrow – with the 12-person roster to be announced before the team heads to the AmeriCup in July in Mexico.

As part of Group A, the U.S. will face Argentina, Brazil, Cuba and Venezuela. They will open up group play against Venezuela on July 1.