The U.S. women’s basketball team dominated on its way to a sixth consecutive gold medal, clinching its latest one with a 101-72 victory over Spain on Saturday.
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Saturday’s win also continued a 49-match Olympic winning streak and was comfortable even by the exacting standards of Team USA.
The 2016 team, for instance, won its games by an average of almost 40 points, but fell short of the record 102.4 points the 1996 team averaged.
By the second quarter the Americans were wearing the Spanish down with breakneck pace and a roster of talent so deep that reigning WNBA Most Valuable Player holder Elena Della Donne (10 points on Saturday) came off the bench and two-time victor Candace Parker didn’t even make the team.
By the time Lindsay Whalen’s layup just beat the halftime buzzer, the US led 49-32 and Spain had just two baskets in the final 6:55 of the half.
Anna Cruz, right, of Spain handles the ball under pressure against Brittney Griner of United States during the women’s gold medal game between United States and Spain at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games on August 20, 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
On Saturday, he added another shred of evidence to that pile, leading the Americans to their sixth straight gold medal, and the second straight for him, as the USA shook off a poor start to wallop Spain in the gold-medal game, 101-72. The Americans rolled into Rio de Janeiro unbeaten in 10 years, such an overwhelming favorite that Djordjevic predicted early in the tournament that it would be a “long way to go” before somebody beat the Americans. By comparison, the 2008 American team won by an average of 37.6 points and the 2012 version by an average of 33.6.
This game marked the end of the Olympic career of Catchings, who is retiring at the end of the WNBA season.
While Serbia will be making their first appearance in the gold medal game, they bring a deep pedigree to the final.
“We were close, but (the U.S.) is a team like it’s a dream team”, Spain’s Silvia Dominguez said.
“What’s better for me is knowing that the people that started that journey, I got a chance to play with, ” Catchings said. It wasn’t as easy as sometimes it looked.
Serbia (4-4) beat France (4-4) 70-63 to win the bronze medal. The Americans won by seven, but they led by only one going into a closely contested fourth quarter. In the 2012 finals, the USA barely edged out Spain. “There are some question marks with the point guard spot, but I don’t think it will be an issue”. They get to go home with their first gold medal ever.
“Serbia came within a whisker of beating us in our pool play, so we absolutely respect them”, Krzyzewski said.
The rims were tight, to begin with for both squads, but Maya Moore and Tina Charles helped change that to give the U.S. an early 5-2 lead in quarter one. Since then, they look much more like a team that truly understands what it will take to avoid an worldwide hoops disaster. Only France, which lost to the United States 67-86 in Thursday’s semi-final, managed to lose by fewer than 25 points.
Kyrie Irving of the Cleveland Cavaliers scored a team-high 15 points while Paul George of the Indiana Pacers added 12 against the Serbians, who saw Nikola Jokic have his best game of the tourney with 25 points. “Each Olympics I played in has been a difference experience”, he said.
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Seimone Augustus and Sylvia Fowles collected their third Olympic gold medals to join three-time Olympic gold medalists Katie Smith, Dawn Staley and Sheryl Swoopes.
