More importantly, the two players on the 12-man roster with previous Olympic experience have largely lived up to expectations and led the way for the rookies.
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Winning in style is no longer the target.
USA’s women continued their dominance in Rio continued with a 105-62 thrashing of China. But as we move to the quarterfinals, where a loss means you’re through, the fact that Team USA has gotten through pool play looking like a team that could lose just like any other team is both astonishing and disturbing.
Not after three successive struggles for Mike Krzyzewski’s squad. Boris Diaw answered right back for France, as the two teams traded buckets midway through the first quarter. The Australians led Team USA at halftime, France played without starting point guard Tony Parker and Serbia was one three-point shot away from forcing overtime.
“Serbia-Croatia is a classic the last 25 years and I think it’s time for us to do something, to fight 100 percent this game and I think we can beat them”, Croatia’s Dario Sakic said.
Give the Americans that much. “They are struggling but they are winning”.
“Yeah, I thought (they would dominate in the Olympics)”, said Durant, who is leading the team in scoring (16.8 points per game) and minutes (28.3 per). They’re still the favorite.
The U.S. remains the most talented team in Rio, but they have a lot of work to do before the quarterfinals begin on Wednesday.
Except that we most certainly can.
Can Team USA survive the tough challenge in Rio and get the championship in this tournament?
Team USA has been just as dominant as we all expected them to be so far in Rio. “They beat us two years ago, we beat them last year, and now we face them again in a critical game”, said Pau Gasol, a two-time National Basketball Association champion big man who leads Spain with 19.4 points and 8.8 rebounds a game.
The three Warriors on the Olympic team had very different games.
It’s probably unreasonable to expect them function like a true team after essentially a month together.
While the performance has been uneven, Team USA coach Mike Krzyzewski remained unconcerned, insisting there is only one statistic that matters and that is the win column, where his team is ideal. And it was his 30 points that spelled the difference between the USA basketball team going undefeated in group play or suffering a humiliating loss to France. If not for Klay Thompson’s 15-point third quarter, the USA may not have even come away with the win.
“We just have to trust ourselves on both sides of the ball”, United States guard Klay Thompson added. “We come into these games with the same mindset – to dominate”. George spoke of squandering “that moment when we looked like we were gonna steamroll ’em”. France kept it close but they did not hold the lead anytime after the first quarter.
With Parker surely back at the controls.
Klay Thompson led the US team to its 50th straight tournament win.
“At the end of the day, no one will ask you anything else except if you have won”, said Krzyzewski.
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“There were many other things that were supposed to be installed, and they could not”, said Dubi, who said Ukrainian suppliers had failed to deliver at the last minute, forcing organizers to improvise. “I think we are getting better offensively and we have to get better defensively”. “Just a succinct comment in that regard”.
