USA’s small forward Angel Mccoughtry (L) holds off France’s forward Valeriane Ayayi during a Women’s semifinal basketball match between France and United States of America at the Carioca Arena 1 in Rio de Janeiro on August 18, 2016 during the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.
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Helen Maroulis of the United States defeated Japan’s Saori Yoshida 4-1 in the 53-kilogram freestyle final to win the first-ever gold medal for an American women’s wrestler.
The US will meet Spain in the final match in the women’s basketball tournament after beating France.
Thursday’s game against France was a rematch of the 2012 London Games gold medal contest. Spain also had to climb up the Group B standings after two losses to open the tournament left them scrambling for victories, and ultimately resulted in a lower seed in the knockout stages and why it faces the U.S now rather than for the gold. “They are going to try to find ways to attack our weak points”. Team USA outscored France 25-8 in the game-deciding third quarter.
“I was panicking at half-time”, McCoughtry admitted.
“You’re not going to be able to take someone like that (Sue Bird) out of the lineup and have it just continue to flow smoothly like it did the first six games”, said U.S. head coach Geno Auriemma about the Americans not having four-time Olympian Sue Bird available due to a sprained knee capsule that was suffered in the USA’s quarterfinal game.
“During the game, pretty hard”. But she said its what they did on the other side of the ball that eventually wore France down.
Diana Taurasi scored 18 points, Maya Moore added 15 and Fowles added 12 points and nine rebounds for the Americans while Isabelle Yacoubou led France with 14 points. We probably needed a game like this under our belt going into Saturday.
“We stayed close for 20 minutes”. You never want to start out slow, but in the end we won. We fought to the end.
“We know who they are”, Krzyzewski said.
“People are starting to see they are not God”. The baton went down, the Americans protested, and they got another go. They practice their shooting, and their plays, and their defensive rotations and they were on point in that first half.
Alba Torrens and Astou Ndour led Spain with 14 points apiece while Nicholls chipped in with 13.
Martine Grael and Kahena Kunze sent their fellow Brazilians into a frenzy on Flamengo Beach after holding off the New Zealand crew by two seconds to win the gold medal in the women’s 49erFX class, which was making its Olympic debut.
“People are always fascinated by how many points we score, but the fact that we could really hold teams down, it showed a lot of character in the third quarter, against a very good team”. “Today, it paid off”. The Americans also beat Spain in the 2014 world championship by 13. We know when to support, when to yell to a teammate, when to say the right things. “If we can do that every quarter, holding them like that, we can get the win”. All of these games we have to work for it, we have to earn it.
Despite the defeat, Serbia can capture its first women’s hoops medal by defeating the French in Saturday’s bronze medal matchup.
“We’ve got to put this game out of our minds”, US-born Serbian forward Danielle Page said.
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Also, the US women’s 4×100-meter relay team stayed on track for a medal, getting through on their second chance after re-running their race on their own because Allyson Felix was bumped making a handover in the preliminaries. “But we’re gracious and we’re humble, and we play the game a certain way, whether we win or lose”, Rapinoe told the network.
