CANCUN, Mexico – Another day, another lopsided scoreline for the USA Women’s U16 National Team.
This was one ugly from the opening tip.
Capitalizing on its depth and size advantage, the Americans drilled Costa Rica for a lopsided 106-19 win in the 2013 FIBA Americas U16 Championship on Friday at Polifórum Benito Juárez.
As the No. 1 seed out of Group A, the USA will face the No. 2 seed out of Group B in the semifinals on June 22, which will be the loser of tonight’s 8 p.m. (CDT) battle between Canada (2-0) and host Mexico (2-0).
The medal semifinal winners will meet in the gold medal game at 7 p.m. (ET) on Sunday, while the losers will play for bronze at 3 p.m. All games are being streamed live online at FIBAAmericas.com.
The USA also secured its berth into the 2014 FIBA U17 World Championship as the top four finishing teams out of the FIBA Americas zone qualify for next year’s Worlds.
Holding Costa Rica to just eight made field goals for the entire game, the U.S. offense featured seven players in double-digit scoring as all 12 players took the court for at least eight minutes of action.
“The game plan was to work on our execution on both sides of the ball,” said USA head coach Sue Phillips of Archbishop Mitty (San Jose, Calif.). “We worked on various defenses and offensively, we looked for an inside-out approach, pounding the ball inside and taking care of the basketball, and we did that well.”
Katie Lou Samuelson of Mater Dei (Santa Ana, Calif.) led the USA with 20 points, including 4-of-6 shooting from 3-point, and eight rebounds; Nancy Mulkey of Cypress Woods (Texas) added 16 points; Lauren Cox of Flower Mound (Texas) finished with 14 points and seven rebounds; Arike Ogunbowale of Divine Savior Holy Angels (Milwaukee) scored 13 points and grabbed six boards;Kalani Brown of Salmen (Slidell, La.) and Asia Durr of St. Pius X (Atlanta) contributed 12 points apiece; and DeJanae Boykin (Charles H. Flowers H.S./Springdale, Md.) rounded out the USA’s double-digit scorers with 10 points and six rebounds.
“We were just focusing on what we needed to improve on,” Mulkey said. “The scoreboard didn’t matter to us. We wanted to work on what we needed to work on, and we did that.”
Costa Rica led very early in the game, 4-2, with a bucket at 8:45 in the first, but that was their last points of the quarter. A 3-pointer from Samuelson kicked off a 33-0 run to close the first period that included scores from six U.S. scorers.
Despite the USA slowing down its offense to focus on execution, that run, the USA’s largest of the game totaled 39 unanswered points as it stretched into the second quarter. Costa Rica managed just one field goal in the second period, which came at 7:37, while the USA raced to 25 points to take a 60-6 lead into the halftime locker room.
In the third quarter, the USA again allowed Costa Rica just one field goal, this time as it compiled 21 points thanks to scores from six different players.
Costa Rica had its best quarter of the game in the last 10 minutes, scoring 11 points. The USA, however, while focusing on four goals set forth by Phillips, added 25 points to finish with a 106-19 win.
“We gave them four specific items to focus on in the second half, and they were detail oriented in what we were trying to do, and I was really pleased with their response,” Phillips said. “We were defending the high post with our guard play, which we needed to a better job of, and taking away middle penetration, and then offensively looking inside-out and taking high-percentage shots.”
Every statistical category was in the USA’s favor, including a 67-23 rebounding advantage, 34 second-chance points to Costa Rica’s zero and 64 points in the paint to the South American’s four. Further, the U.S. bench provided 64 points for the red, white and blue, which recorded its best assist total of the competition with 27, while committing just five turnovers.
