Istanbul – As usual the USA Women’s National team advances to the gold medal game – this one being the 17th FIBA World Championship for Women. It will be the USA’s fourth opportunity for back-to-back Championships (53-57, 86-92, 98-02, 10-14) since the event originated.
With a grind-it-out 82-70 victory over Australia, the USA will face Spain in the final. Surprisingly this is the exact game match up that everyone expected in Madrid at the men’s World Cup a month ago. Spain missed the finals with France taking their spot vs. the USA Men in the Gold medal game.
To see the final statistics from the USA – Australia game, follow the link below to the FIBA web site.
http://www.fiba.com/world/women/2014/0410/Australia-USA#|tab=boxscore_statistics
The anticipation of a big match up between 6-8 Brittney Griner and Aussie post 6-8 Liz Cambage didn’t happen when Cambage pulled out prior to the start of FIBA play. But Griner was not the force against the Aussies, eventually fouling out with 6pts in 17 minutes.
“That was a part of our game plan,” said Aussie Coach Brendan Joyce. “And it worked except Tina Charles came in an picked up the slack.”
Tina Charles (18 pts, 9 reb) and Nneka Ogwumike (6 pts, 5 reb) went to work against Australia’s big’s Marianna Tolo and Cayla Francis and helped the US to 40 points in the paint. Australia stayed around in the game closing the US lead to six points a few times before Maya Moore (16 pts) and Diana Taurasi (11 pts) pushed the lead open. Its wasn’t the usual blowout but it was a victory to put the USA National Team into the finals against Spain which outlasted host Turkey 66-56 in the other semifinal.
“Spain deserves to be in the Championship game,” said USA head coach Geno Auriemma. “And they deserve to be there because they played well the whole tournament and because they beat the home team in front of a great crowd, a great game. They earned way to the game tomorrow. So I don’t think they’re looking at us and saying “Oh my god, we have to play the United States tomorrow.” I think what they did today was pretty impressive.”
Impressive early today was Canada’s stunning 55-40 rout of favorite France in the consolation game to advance to the 5th place game. Miranda Ayim led 10 of 12 Canadian scorers with 12 points. France came into the game after being routed by the USA the evening before. The loss to host Turkey put France into an early round game vs. the USA and then into a 5th-7th bracket. French star Sandrine Gruda was limited to 10 pts and 12 rebounds on a 27% shooting performance. Add this to the lack of team defense and offensive energy and France is not in the 7th place game vs. Serbia.
China also was the benefactor of a tough 1pt loss by Serbia to host Turkey the night before. The lack of energy enabled a young and impressive China team to push past for 85-69 victory and opportunity to play Canada in the 5th place game.
TOURNAMENT NOTES
The USA will be going for it’s 9th World Championship gold while this will be Spain’s best finish since 3rd in 2010 and best since starting competition at this level since 1994. This will be Canada’s best finish since 1986 & 1979 when they finished 3rd. This will be France’s worst showing since 2002 (8th), The program which won France’s first team medal with a silver against the USA in London 2012 came from 6th place in the 2010 World Championships to reach that. This is Serbia’s first trip the Worlds final bracket. China won WC silver in 1994 and was 6th in 2002.
EVENT FORMAT CHANGES
Look for some dramatic change coming in the future for the FIBA World Cup for Men moving to a new format next year. This means the Men’s World Cup and Women’s World Championships will no longer be played in the same yearly cycle. The Women will remain on the four-year cycle while the Men’s Cup moves to a bigger team format, a new Zone larger play-in format and a Championship in 2019 after the Women’s in 2018.
USA-AUSTRALIA FIBA Complete Overview
