Her selection for the Olympics came after a 12-month period in which she was unable to play for the Harvard Crimson women's basketball team due to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) declaring her ineligible. Fagbenle had taken the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) exam whilst at school in the UK and NCAA rules say that an athlete must be enrolled in college within two years of sitting for the exam; Fagbenle took an additional year to graduate from high school because she repeated a year after moving to the United States.
