SC women’s basketball head coach Dawn Staley was part of her fifth Olympic gold medal team Saturday as she helped guide USA Basketball to a 101-72 win over Spain in the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.
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According to NBC, Taurasi and Lindsay Whalen, also a WNBA champion and Olympic alum, led the team to victory, each scoring up to 17 points at Saturday’s game.
“We had a goal to win the gold medal, but there was something else we wanted to get across”, Taurasi said.
The team, led by Maya Moore and Diana Taurasi, took home the gold after winning today’s game against Spain 101-72. With experience and depth of the bench, the victory was beyond doubt for the U.S.at that time. The forward won state titles her final three seasons at Collins Hill, two national titles as a four-time consensus All-American at CT and three WNBA titles in her first five seasons with the Minnesota Lynx.
Coming off a silver medal at the London Olympics, France overcame the loss of their best player, Celine Dumerc, to finish the tournament 4-4. This marked the first time on the podium for the countries in women’s basketball.
It’s just one of the six US women’s basketball teams to win consecutive Olympic gold medals, producing 49 consecutive wins at the Games.
Astou Ndour’s 3-pointer pulled Spain within 27-24 but the USA responded with a 14-2 run for a 41-26 edge.
The U.S. defense was less than stellar in the group stage when it allowed over 90 points to both Serbia and France, and 88 points to Australia.
“It’s made this journey a little sweeter now that we’re in the gold-medal game”, star forward Kevin Durant said. “We were close, but it’s a team like it’s a dream team”, Silvia Dominguez said.
“Obviously it was an incredible tournament for us”, said U.S. head coach Geno Auriemma.
“It wasn’t as easy as sometimes it looked”, Auriemma said, but it looked so easy so often.
Team USA has built a powerhouse team since the beginning and it’s likely that they’ll be bringing the majority of its strength to the next Summer Olympics, which will be held in Tokyo in 2020. The high-scoring game against Spain was the sixth time in their eight Olympic contests in Rio that they had scored more than 100 points. It was none other than Diana Taurasi who single-handedly shifted the momentum after back-to-back three-pointers, and Moore who finished the first half with 12 points and five assists. We really did. I don’t think I’ve ever been around a group that’s this talented and also played this hard. At UConn, she scored 3,036 career points, the fourth-most in NCAA history.
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“We will be anxious to get back out on the court and I guess put this right to some degree”. By the fourth quarter, the US was up by about 30 points. Of those, just one was decided by fewer than 10 points.
