By Shawn Fury
In a stellar college basketball career that included stops at Duke, Virginia Tech and Seton Hall, Azana Baines has used plenty of one-on-one skills during five-on-five contests. At practice and in pickup games, she worked hard in two-on-two battles. But last summer, Baines expanded her game by playing in competitive three-on-three tournaments that took her around the world.
Baines played on the women’s USA 3X3 U23 Nations Leagues team and excelled in a sport that will be featured in the Summer Olympics this year for only the second time.
“I didn’t even know that three-on-three was a thing,” Baines says. “But … it opened my eyes to a different style of basketball and gave me a bunch of different experiences that I never would’ve gotten without it.”
These aren’t the leisurely three-on-three games folks play at the YMCA. Fast-paced and intense, the games go by quickly — they last 10 minutes on the clock, or end when a team reaches 21 points. When Baines and her Seton Hall teammates traveled to a tournament in Colorado Springs, Colo., “We were like, sheesh, this game is quick because there are no breaks other than you calling timeout or dead-ball situations. That was the only breather that you got. So it definitely was an adjustment. And being in Colorado, the air is different there, so that didn’t help either.”
She adapted just fine. In Chile, Baines and her team captured first place in the U23 Nations League Americas conference, while in Mongolia her club finished fourth at the Nations League Final. But the results were almost secondary to the overall experience, which also featured treks to Canada and Hungary. While playing dozens of games, she bonded with other Division I players, endured the longest plane ride of her life and savored experiences in different countries and cultures.
Once the summer ended and Baines was back with her teammates — including Kae Satterfield, who played with Team Puerto Rico — the change in her game was evident to Pirates coach Tony Bozzella ’89. “She’s come back with a sense of confidence, a sense of understanding. Obviously she’s gotten better skill-wise, defensively. … She made the point to us: in three-on-three, you’re out on an island, there’s not a lot of help in defense. You’ve got to guard the kid yourself, otherwise you’re going to look like an idiot.”
A star at New Jersey’s Gloucester Catholic, Baines was recruited by Seton Hall but said: “[I] wasn’t really a fan of being that close to home my first years of college. … But over the years of being away from my family for so long, I felt like it was time for me to come back as close as possible.”
After averaging 8.1 points in her first Seton Hall season, Baines put up big numbers throughout the 2023-24 campaign. She popped in 25 points against Rutgers and added 24 two games later against East Carolina. In a December upset victory over No. 23 UNLV, she hit 8-of-11 shots from the field for 23 points and collected 21 points against conference foe Villanova.
Some of the credit for her offensive success goes back to her three-on-three exploits. “Her three-point shooting — way better. Way better,” Bozzella says. “Her jump shooting has really improved, and it had to be because in that three-on-three tournament you’re playing against a lot of teams that have bigger, stronger women.”
From Baines’s perspective, “The one-on-one aspect of it made me more confident with the ball in my hands and being able to make different moves, different reads. The game was so fast, it helped me make quicker decisions, so that’s something that really helped when the season started.”
When her college career ends, Baines hopes to make it in the WNBA but she also has “really high aspirations to go overseas” and play. She would be well-prepared for the travel, thanks to last year’s globe-trotting adventures. And the same goes for her game.
Shawn Fury is an author based in New York City.
