Agot Makeer’s Olympic Journey Begins in Guadalajara, With South Carolina Watching Closely

South Carolina sophomore Agot Makeer will represent Canada this week in the FIBA Women’s Olympic Pre-Qualifying Tournament, the first competitive step on a four-year road that could end with her playing in front of a home Gamecocks crowd — three years down the line, at the Los Angeles 2028 Games.

Canada opens group play Monday against Senegal, with the eight-team field split evenly between nations that missed out on this year’s FIBA World Cup in Berlin. The tournament runs through August 23 in Guadalajara, Mexico, and the stakes are straightforward: the winner earns a direct berth into the FIBA Women’s Olympic Qualifying Tournaments, Canada Basketball now scheduled for February 2028. Lose in Mexico, and Canada’s Olympic path gets considerably harder, funneling through a later qualifying tournament with no room for error.

A Youth Movement, and a Sophomore’s Opportunity

Makeer’s inclusion says as much about where Canada Basketball is heading as it does about her own trajectory. The program is mid-transition: longtime national team coach Nell Fortner, hired away from Georgia Tech in the spring of 2025, is the winningest coach in USA Basketball women’s history, with a 101-14 record that includes gold medals at the 1998 FIBA World Championship and the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Wikipedia That championship pedigree came with a mandate for change — Canada has been eliminated in the quarterfinals in each of the last two Olympics, and the losses in Paris prompted both the general manager and head coach to leave their positions Yahoo! before Fortner was brought in to rebuild.

Part of that rebuild means leaning on college-aged talent rather than the veteran core that has carried Canada for the better part of a decade. Makeer, BYU’s Delaney Gibb and Washington’s Avery Howell are getting minutes that might once have gone to established WNBA veterans, a bet that the next Olympic cycle needs younger legs even if it costs some experience in the short term.

For Makeer personally, this is a natural progression rather than a surprise. She’s been on Canada Basketball’s radar since her age-group days, when she was named to the All-Star Five at the 2024 U17 World Cup after averaging 17.7 points and 7.0 rebounds in a run to the silver medal. A fourth-place finish with the U19 team last summer — Canada missed bronze by a single missed three at the buzzer, with Makeer having forced the turnover that created the look — only reinforced that she belonged in the senior pipeline.

The Amihere Precedent

If Makeer eventually suits up for Canada at a major Games, she won’t be the first Gamecock to do it. Laeticia Amihere played for Canada’s senior national team throughout her South Carolina career and became the first South Carolina basketball player to compete in the Olympics while still enrolled in school, appearing at both the Tokyo 2021 and Paris 2024 Games. On3 Amihere has since moved on to the WNBA, which is why she isn’t part of this Guadalajara roster — but her career is the clearest template for what a Makeer international breakout could eventually look like: a Gamecock building name recognition on the world stage while still contributing to Dawn Staley’s program in Columbia.

That said, a lot has to happen between now and any Olympic roster. Making Canada’s 12-player group for a pre-qualifying tournament is meaningfully different from making a 12-player Olympic roster, and Fortner’s staff — which includes assistants Christie Sides and Noelle Quinn — will spend these Games evaluating who fits the program’s timeline, not handing out guarantees.

Why This Matters Beyond One Tournament

The broader context is that South Carolina’s roster has quietly become one of the more internationally decorated in the country, and this summer made that unusually visible. Joyce Edwards won gold with USA Basketball’s 3×3 senior national team at the World Cup in June. Ayla McDowell helped Brazil claim bronze at the FIBA South American Qualifier, a finish that punches Brazil’s ticket to next year’s AmeriCup. Alicia Tournebize is set to join France’s World Cup training camp in Paris later this month, with a shot at playing in Berlin in September if she makes the final roster. And two program alumnae, Aliyah Boston and A’ja Wilson, were named to the USA World Cup team.

None of that is coincidental. Programs that recruit at South Carolina’s level increasingly pull in players who are already committed — or on track to commit — to their countries’ senior national team pathways, and a coaching staff that supports those commitments (rather than discouraging summer national-team obligations that cut into offseason training) tends to keep attracting that caliber of recruit. It’s a version of a talent flywheel other blue-blood programs have leaned on for years, and it’s increasingly part of South Carolina’s own identity under Staley.

What to Watch For

Canada’s group-stage draw put it alongside host Mexico, the Philippines and Senegal, with the top two teams from each of the two four-team groups advancing to Saturday’s semifinals. The group schedule, per Canada Basketball’s release:

• Monday, Aug. 17 — vs. Senegal, 7:30 p.m. EDT
• Wednesday, Aug. 19 — vs. Philippines, 7:30 p.m. EDT
• Thursday, Aug. 20 — vs. Mexico, 10:30 p.m. EDT
• Saturday, Aug. 22 — Semifinals
• Sunday, Aug. 23 — Medal round

Games will stream on FIBA’s YouTube channel and the tournament’s official FIBA site. For South Carolina fans, the more interesting long-term question isn’t whether Canada wins this week — it’s whether a strong showing accelerates Makeer’s climb up the senior national team depth chart heading into a World Cup cycle and, eventually, LA 2028. A big tournament here won’t settle that on its own, but it’s the kind of opportunity that shapes how a young player is viewed by a coaching staff that’s actively remaking its roster around exactly this age group.