Experience the Key for This Team : Women’s basketball: One former Trojan, Cynthia Cooper, makes Olympic squad. Another, Pam McGee, doesn’t.

Who would have thought that the real training ground for the U.S. Olympic women’s basketball team was almost anywhere but the United States?

Of the 12-member team announced Thursday, only one player hasn’t spent the last few years sharpening her game by playing professionally in Europe or Japan. The exception is point guard Suzie McConnell, a high school basketball coach in the Pittsburgh area, who played in the 1988 Olympics.

Teresa Edwards will make the record book by becoming the first basketball player in United States history to compete in three Olympics as she attempts to win her third gold medal. Edwards, 27, a 5-foot-11 forward from the University of Georgia, was the second-leading scorer for the 1988 squad with a 16.6-point average.

Joining Edwards are five other 1988 Olympians--Vicky Bullett, Cynthia Cooper, Katrina McClain, McConnell and Teresa Weatherspoon. Cooper, who helped USC win national titles in 1983 and ‘84, didn’t play for the national team last year because she was recovering from an emergency appendectomy. Others selected were Daedra Charles, Clarissa Davis, Medina Dixon, Tammy Jackson, Carolyn Jones and Vickie Orr.

The biggest surprise was the exclusion of guard Jennifer Azzi, a member of the 1990 World Championship and Goodwill Games teams. Azzi, Katy Steding and Pam McGee, a 1984 Olympian and former USC player, were the final three cuts.

“This is really a veteran team,” Olympic Coach Theresa Grentz said. “International experience is important, and you could really see in the trials the difference between players who had played overseas and those who had played collegiately.”

The selection process favored experience. The average age of this team is 25.8, compared to 23 in ’88.