USA true to form

[rainmaker]

The US Women's National Team lost to ... Russia?!?!

This is the Fox News analysis...

"Russia took advantage of poor shooting and sloppy ball-handling by the U.S. to take a 58-38 lead after three quarters."

Oh, well, I guess the Women's ball has already sunk to the men's level. I thought they had at least a few more years before they went down the tubes. Rats.

[Jurassic Referee]

The report left out poor free throw shooting too. I think that they were sumthin' like 7 for 13.

One bad game does not necessarily an NBA all-star team make.

[REFVA]

Plus a missed layup with 12 seconds left in the game..

[BBall_Junkie]

Plus a bad call at the end of the game where the 3 pt shot did not travel the requisite 10 yards before it was touched by the Russian team and was subsequently awarded to the Russian even though it was the USA that recovered the ball in the end... Oh wait, I have my contests mixed up!!!

Although, I am sure we can attribute this loss in someway to the poor refereeing!!!

[rockyroad]

Interesting little blurb in our local fish-wrapper out here made the point that both men's and women's USA coaches/sponsors/players are bemoaning the fact that they don't get to play together as a team as much as the other countries teams do...the writer points out that that is not the reason both teams lost, but a lack of fundamental skills and basic understanding of the team concept which the other nations do have is what led both teams to lose...something to think about, anyway.

[Dan_ref]

Originally Posted by rockyroad

Interesting little blurb in our local fish-wrapper out here...

Does anybody actually wrap fish in newspaper anymore?

Just wondering....maybe we need a poll...

[Jimgolf]

Originally Posted by rainmaker

Oh, well, I guess the Women's ball has already sunk to the men's level. I thought they had at least a few more years before they went down the tubes. Rats.

The women's team was very good, and had no fundamental flaws, but they picked the semi-finals to all stink at the same time. They scored only 6 points in the 3rd quarter, as the Russian lead grew from 5 points at half time to 20 points at the end of the 3rd quarter. By comparison, in the Bronze medal game, Diana Taurasi scored 18 points in the 3rd quarter by herself.

The US team beat every other team by comfortable margins, winning by about 40 in the quarterfinal game and in the Bronze medal game. They had previously beaten the Russian team by 10 in the qualifying rounds. This was simply everyone having a bad game at the same time, while Russia played well. This was an "Any Given Sunday"-type loss, not all all similar to the Men's team loss to Greece. Russia was ranked number two in the world prior to the tournament, and the US team was on a 50-game winning streak dating back to 1994.

Everyone is entitled to a bad game, once in awhile. Unfortunately they all picked the same quarter to have it.