At the Spokane Hoopfest, home to the world’s largest 3X3 basketball tournament, seven former Ivy League women’s basketball stars will lace up their sneakers this weekend alongside 25 other elite hoopsters from across the globe in a center court showcase staged by the 3X3 Basketball Association. 

Blake Dietrick and Carlie Littlefield (Princeton), Harmoni Turner and McKenzie Forbes (Harvard), Camille Zimmerman and Hannah Pratt (Columbia), and Roxy Barahman (Yale) have signed up to play on the 3XBA tour this summer, with the Spokane Hoopfest as the opening stop. 

An eighth Ivy alumnus, Kaitlyn Chen, had signed up to play in Spokane as well, but the former Princeton star and recently crowned national champion at UConn pulled out of the 3XBA tour after she was offered a contract to play for the WNBA’s Golden State Valkyries. 

In April, the Valkyries selected Chen early in the third round of the WNBA Draft, only to waive her a few weeks later during training camp. Ditto for Harvard’s Turner, who was also drafted in the third round by the Las Vegas Aces and later waived.

Other WNBA Draft picks failed to earn roster spots this spring as well, and many of those players have now found an opportunity to continue developing their professional basketball careers by signing on to join the 3XBA tour.

The 3xBA describes itself as “the premier professional women’s FIBA 3X3 tour and youth development pipeline in the United States.” Part of its mission is to provide an outlet for standouts like Chen and Turner, who didn’t quite make the cut in their first attempts, to land a roster spot in the WNBA.

“The idea, is that young players, the bubble players, who maybe are the 13th and 14th kids who would make a WNBA roster if we had that many spots, can come and play 3X3 and potentially end up on a USA national team or make money, have a livelihood during the summer, and then go and play their five-on-five season overseas if they want to, in the fall and spring,” Blake Dietrick told Ivy Hoops Online.

Dietrick is one of the 3XBA’s “Founding Athletes,” and her path to success in 3X3 basketball has played a significant role in blazing a trail for other former star players in the Ancient Eight.

A former Ivy League Player of the Year who led her 2014-15 Tigers squad to an undefeated 30-0 regular season, Dietrick went undrafted when her collegiate career ended. A short time later, however, she signed as a free agent with the Seattle Storm of the WNBA. Dietrick also had playing stints and training camp appearances with other WNBA teams, including the Atlanta Dream. 

She also found success playing professional 5-on-5 women’s basketball overseas in Italy, Australia, Greece and France. In France, she helped lead her team to a league title and the women’s EuroCup championship.

But former Princeton men’s basketball player John Rogers saw an opportunity in the emerging 3X3 game for former Ivy players to succeed, and he reached out to Dietrick and convinced her to enter his 3X3 pipeline.

“John Rogers is a huge supporter of 3X3, and has been from the jump, and he was sending teams of Princeton graduates to USA nationals before there was really any international ecosystem for 3X3,” Dietrick explained. “And so John was like, ‘Well, I’m gonna send people. We have a chance of going to the World Cup. I’m gonna send teams.’ So that was, like, right out of college, I started playing and I fell in love with the format.”

Dietrick transformed that love into gold. She won gold medals playing for Team USA at the 2023 Pan Am Games in Santiago, Chile, and at the FIBA AmeriCup in 2021. In fact, she’s donned the Team USA jersey at many FIBA 3X3 tournaments and stops over the past several years, something that makes her immensely proud.

“Every time you put on that jersey and you wear ‘USA’ across your chest, it is so special,” Dietrick told Ivy Hoops Online. “It’s unlike any other team I’ve ever been on, in terms of you always talk about when you’re on a team, that you’re playing for something greater than yourself. And for me, our national team is the ultimate representation of that.”

A few years ago, Dietrick observed a kindred spirit developing into a star playmaker on the Princeton campus in the form of Carlie Littlefield, a 5-foot-9, two-time All-Ivy First Team guard from Waukee, Iowa.

Littlefield’s stellar Princeton career was interrupted by the COVID pandemic. In March 2020, nearing the end of her junior campaign, Littlefield’s Tigers were 26-1, undefeated in Ivy play, and likely headed to the NCAA Tournament with the highest seed in Ivy League history.

“We had a loaded team,” Littlefield told Ivy Hoops Online. “So I think we were really excited about what we could have done in the [NCAA] tournament. I think we were projected to be a four- or five-seed, which is just kind of crazy to hear about an Ivy League team with that high of a seed.

“I think we could have made a lot of noise in the tournament. We had the best scoring defense in the nation. So we often joke that since defense wins championships, we did win the national championship that year!”

Littlefield stayed on campus at Princeton during her senior year and graduated on time even though the Ivy League opted not to play varsity sports during the 2020-21 season due to the lingering risks posed by COVID. 

And since the Ivy League doesn’t allow graduate students with NCAA eligibility to play varsity sports, Littlefield transferred to North Carolina to complete her collegiate career where she reunited with former Princeton coach Courtney Banghart. Littlefield helped the Tar Heels reach the Sweet 16 in 2022.

But she still laments the opportunities she missed at Princeton due to COVID.

“I think that team we would have had my senior year would have done some really great things, too, and I never wanted to spend my career at any other institution than Princeton,” Littlefield said. “I think the year at Carolina, while it was incredible and it was fun to form relationships there as well, I think it also showed me, in a way, how special of a place Princeton is just being a smaller campus, a tight-knit feel. I think that kind of also was a silver lining, just realizing how special the three years I did get at Princeton were.”

Meanwhile, Dietrick had been keeping close tabs on the Princeton basketball program and was familiar with Littlefield’s gritty style of play. She reached out to Littlefield and convinced her to join a 3X3 training camp in the summer of 2022. 

“And immediately, once I started playing that style of play, I was hooked,” said Littlefield. “And just the community that comes around it, meeting other incredible female athletes like Blake, and just hearing their experience overseas and in college, I was hooked, and so I’ve tried to stay involved ever since.”

Littlefield played alongside Dietrick for Team USA during the 2023 FIBA-sponsored Women’s Series, helping the team win top-3 finishes at several stops during the tour. 

Other Ivy Leaguers have since joined the cause. 

Last summer, Abbey Hsu, Columbia’s all-time leading scorer and the 2024 Ivy League Player of the Year, won a roster spot on Team USA for the AmeriCup competition in San Juan, Puerto Rico. With guidance from her coach, former Princeton player and coach Sydney Johnson, Hsu helped lead her squad to a silver medal.

The Ivy pipeline to 3X3 professional hoops is not limited to women players. Former Ivy League men’s basketball players have also established notable success in the 3X3 universe, including Henry Caruso, a current member of Team USA’s 3X3 national team. Caruso, an All-Ivy First Team guard who played three seasons at Princeton, won gold representing Team USA in the 2024 AmeriCup competition in San Juan.

Also last summer, former Princeton men’s basketball forward Kareem Maddox earned a roster spot and played for Team USA at the men’s 3X3 basketball competition at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. 

Why are so many Ivy Leaguers drawn to successful careers in 3X3 basketball? 

According to Dietrick and Littlefield, it’s because Ivy League basketball players are smart and gritty. Call it intellectual grit, akin to Stanford football’s Intellectual Brutality.

“I think it speaks a lot to the style of basketball that you play in the Ivy League,” Littlefield said. “In the Ivy League, it’s a very fundamental style. Everybody can pass, everybody can dribble. There’s a big emphasis on learning how to read the defense and knowing when to backcut. I mean, you look at the Princeton offense, it’s just a very high-IQ style of basketball, and I think that lends really well to the 3X3 game.”  

But Littlefield acknowledges that the increasingly gritty style of play on display in the Ivy League also transfers well to the 3X3 game. 

“It’s just gritty, like you got to have heart, you got to be willing to kind of put your body on the line to make sure your team wins. And that is something I honed and really learned what it meant to do when I was at Princeton. So grittiness, yes, the Ivy League’s very gritty.”

Dietrick echoes Littlefield’s sentiments about Ivy players bringing intellect and grit to the half-court battlefield of 3X3.

“Having a high basketball IQ is essential to being successful in 3X3,” Dietrick said. “And I think that the Ivy League inherently brings in those kinds of kids who are very cerebral about the game of basketball.”

But Dietrick agrees that physical toughness is also critically important.

“I think Carlie is a really good example of that,” Dietrick explained. “She is super-gritty and super-hard-nosed and physical. There’s plenty of other examples in the Ivy League right now, like Kitty Henderson, I think is a really good one. Unfortunately, she’s not American, but she would be great at 3X3.”

Henderson, who graduated in 2025 as Columbia’s all-time leader in assists, is currently playing overseas for Team Great Britain in the women’s EuroBasket competition. But the reigning Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year undoubtedly would adapt well to the 3X3 game if she decided to pursue a career in the emerging sport.

More than 250,000 fans are expected to attend Spokane Hoopfest, which will stage basketball-related tournaments and events in Spokane’s iconic Riverfront Park June 27 and 28.

The 3XBA tourney tips off at the center court of Spokane Hoopfest on Friday, June 28 at 11 a.m. ET. The event can be streamed for free via AWSN on Pluto TV.