PUERTO AYSEN, Chile — The USA is two wins from the 2019 FIBA Americas U16 Women’s championship and once again the quarter victory was dominant.
The Americans remained undefeated and recorded a lopsided 107-32 win over Brazil in the quarterfinals Thursday in Polideportivo Arena.
The USA in its four wins never has trailed, has averaged 107.0 points per game and owns a 70.0-point average margin of victory.
With the quarterfinal win, the USA also earned a berth into 2020 FIBA U17 World Cup that will be played in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, as all four semifinal teams qualify for the 2020 U17s.
At 6 p.m. EDT on Friday, the USA will face the winner of this evening’s Puerto Rico (1-2)-Mexico (1-2) quarterfinal.
All games will stream live online at YouTube.com/FIBA and Facebook.com/USABasketball.
“Brazil was different than any team we have played, because they are really quick,” said USA head coach Mark Campbell of Union University. “I was really happy with how hard we played. I don’t think we played perfect by any means.
“I love the fact that they pull for each other. I feel like we are focused for 40 minutes for the most part. That’s a hard thing to do to get any team to focus for 40 minutes. I think you can tell by our quarters defensively. This is an exceptional team, but we still have a lot of work to do.”
The USA forced 31 Brazil turnovers and outrebounded Brazil 72-33.
All 12 USA players scored, led by Sonia Citron’s (Ursuline School/Scarsdale, N.Y.) 16 points, while Lauren Betts (Grandview H.S./Centennial, Colo.) finished with a double-double of 15 points and 16 rebounds.
“We played within ourselves,” Citron said. “We didn’t let the emotions of the game get into our heads. We just kept calm and played our game.”
Londynn Jones (Santiago H.S./Riverside, Calif.) added 14 points, Olivia Miles (Blair Academy/Phillipsburg, N.J.) was credited with 11 points and five assists and Aaliyah Moore (Moore H.S./Moore, Okla.) filled the stat sheet with 10 points, seven rebounds and five assists.
“All I can say is, ‘wow,'” Moore said. “That was so much fun. Brazil is a really good team, and we knew it was going to be a challenging game. But we knew that if we came out hard in the first five minutes and we didn’t let up, the game would be in our corner, and that’s what we did.”
Sprinting ahead 11-0 before Brazil put its first points on the scoreboard, the USA led 27-10 after the first quarter, then outscored Brazil 23-5 in the second to take a comfortable 50-15 lead to the locker room at halftime. Ten U.S. players scored in the game’s first half.
The U.S. maintained its control over the game in the third period, and after outpacing Brazil 30-11, the USA lead was up to 80-26 heading into the final quarter. A 27-6 fourth quarter showing earned the red, white and blue the 107-32 win.
“I think we came into the game knowing it was going to be a different type of competition,” said Kiki Rice, who will be a freshman at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. “We played really hard. We started off with a fast tempo, and we pushed the ball. We really played to our strengths. We fed the ball inside to our posts, who had a really good game finishing tonight. They went up strong. Even if we weren’t hitting our 3s, we were crashing the offensive boards, blocking out on free throws. We were doing things we had worked on improving.”
