The defending Chengdu champions wasted absolutely no time announcing their presence in the Philippines. Joyce Edwards and the United States women’s 3×3 team opened their Manila campaign in emphatic fashion Wednesday night, dismantling host nation Manila by a commanding 21-12 scoreline in the Qualifying Draw — and the South Carolina sophomore was right at the center of it, delivering 9 points in what was a statement-making performance from the opening possession.
A Score That Says Everything
In 3×3 basketball, margins communicate more than traditional box scores. The format is played on a half court with a 10-minute clock and a 12-second shot clock, with the first team to 21 points — or the team in the lead at the end of regulation — declared the winner. A final score of 21-12 isn’t merely a comfortable win. It is a nine-point demolition in a format where possessions are scarce, every shot matters, and the pace of scoring leaves almost no time for a trailing team to manufacture a comeback. The USA didn’t just advance out of Qualifying Draw A — they sent a message to every team in the main draw that the Chengdu title was no accident.
For context on what 9 points means in this format: in a game that ends 21-12, contributing nearly half of your team’s total output is the kind of individual performance that shifts the competitive gravity of an entire tournament. Edwards was the engine. The result reflected it.
Edwards Is Becoming the Story of This Series
The performance against Manila is the latest chapter in what is quickly becoming a remarkable international debut for the South Carolina sophomore. In Chengdu just days earlier, Edwards kept the interior congested throughout the championship run, forcing key stops against Germany in the final that kept the USA within striking distance during Germany’s late surge from 12-12 to 16-13, before the Americans engineered one of the most dramatic title game comebacks of the young season.
That was the defensive version of Joyce Edwards. Against Manila in the qualifying draw, the offensive version showed up in full — 9 points in a 21-point game, dominating a host nation playing in front of their own crowd with the kind of physicality and skill that simply cannot be taught. It can only be developed, and the foundation for that development was laid at South Carolina, where Edwards averaged 19.2 points, 6.8 rebounds, 2.4 assists, and 1.8 steals as a sophomore — setting the program’s single-season scoring record with 768 total points while earning first-team All-SEC and second-team AP All-American honors.
What Edwards is doing right now, in back-to-back international tournaments across Asia, is confirming that those college numbers weren’t inflated by a favorable conference environment. She is producing at the highest level of the women’s 3×3 circuit, against international competition from across the globe, and she is doing it consistently.
The Qualifying Draw Structure and What Comes Next
The Qualifying Draw format adds a layer of pressure that separates truly battle-tested teams from those who simply look good on paper. Six teams competed in the Qualifying Draw for the final two available spots in the Manila Main Draw, with the USA placed in Qualifying Draw A alongside host Manila and Warsaw of Poland. Advancing out of that group required winning on demand — no warmup games, no guaranteed path to the main event. The USA handled that assignment decisively.
The Main Draw awaits, and the field will be unforgiving. Headlining Manila are top seeds Ulaanbaatar Amazons of Mongolia, eager to bounce back after a quarterfinal exit in Chengdu, alongside dangerous squads from Poland, Germany, Lithuania, and a host Philippines team that will carry every advantage of playing on home soil. The USA, as Chengdu champions, will carry the target that comes with being the team everyone wants to knock off.
That is not a burden for this group. Based on the evidence of the last week — from the Chengdu championship run through Wednesday night’s 21-12 destruction of Manila in the qualifying draw — it looks more like fuel.
The 2026 FIBA 3×3 Women’s Series continues after Manila with a stop in Shanghai, China on May 16-17, before a global tour that spans France, Netherlands, Azerbaijan, Mongolia, and beyond, ultimately concluding at the Project Redwings Shanghai Final on September 5-6. The series is a marathon, and the USA is sprinting.
Joyce Edwards is just getting started.
