PUERTO AYSEN, Chile — Three up, three down for the USA Women’s U16 National Team at the FIBA Americas Championships.
USA upped its record to 3-0 with a 98-33 victory over Mexico Wednesday evening. With the undefeated preliminary mark, the USA finished as the No. 1 seed out of Group A and will play Brazil (1-2), the No. 4 seed from Group B, in the quarterfinals at 3:30 p.m. EDT on Thursday.
All games will stream live online at YouTube.com/FIBAand Facebook.com/USABasketball.
The USA broke the game open with a 14-0 run in the first quarter, and the U.S. lead was not threatened for the remainder of the night.
“I was happy that we applied some things defensively, and we were in a lot better position defensively,” said USA head coach Mark Campbell of Union University. “We didn’t shoot as well from 3 tonight, so obviously that’s a different feeling, but I thought Olivia had her best game tonight. I thought Amari had her best game tonight, and I thought we made some extra passes.
“We have several things we’ve got to get better at coming into tomorrow. We are going to play a Brazil team that is a lot different than the teams we have played so far.”
Payton Verhulst (Bishop Meige H.S./De Soto, Kan.) was the high scorer with 19 points on 7-of-11 shooting from the field, Lauren Betts (Grandview H.S./Centennial, Colo.) led in rebounding with 14 boards and to go with eight points and Olivia Miles (Blair Academy/Phillipsburg, N.J.) dished out a game-best nine assists and added six points.
Also scoring in double digits were Londynn Jones (Santiago H.S./Riverside, Calif.), who tallied 13, KK Bransford (Mount Notre Dame H.S./Cincinnati, Ohio) and Amari DeBerry (Williamsville South H.S./Buffalo, N.Y.), who each scored 12 points, and Sonia Citron (Ursuline School/Scarsdale, N.Y.), who chipped in 10 points.
“The team played really well,” DeBerry said. “It was one of our better games. We really played together and hustled really hard. We worked for every board and on every possession that we had.”
The USA scored seven seconds into the game and never trailed. However, Mexico knotted the score at 7-7 early in the first quarter. That was as close as the opponent would get as the red, white and blue went on a 14-0 run to push ahead 21-7 at 2:37. After another Mexico bucket, the USA closed the quarter on a 7-2 spurt for a 28-11 lead.
All eight teams advanced to the quarterfinals. Also-unbeaten Canada (3-0) will face El Salvador (0-3), Puerto Rico (1-2) will square off against Mexico (1-2) and Ecuador (1-2) will match up against host Chile (2-1).
