By Benjamin Mallet
PARIS (Reuters) -Reigning champions the United States crashed to a third straight defeat in the women’s 3×3 basketball pool stage at the Paris Olympics on Thursday, going down 17-15 to Australia.
The U.S. are rooted to the bottom of the standings behind Azerbaijan, who beat them on Wednesday, with their prospects of qualifying directly for the semi-finals looking bleak.
They can still hope for a spot in the last four through the repechage round but they will need to start winning soon with only four of their pool games remaining.
On Thursday, NBA All Star Kevin Durant was courtside to support the U.S. at the Place de la Concorde but they never had a clear lead and eventually succumbed to the Australians.
“We have to stay together. We know what’s not clicking for us, and we have to be better at that,” said WNBA player Rhyne Howard. “We have to hold ourselves to a higher standard and compete like we want to win gold.”
Howard and her team mates will have another chance to notch a first win against unbeaten Spain later on Thursday, when the American men’s team will have two shots at clinching their first victory at their debut tournament.
Tokyo champions Latvia earlier pulled of a swift 22-8 victory over China to top the men’s pool as the only unbeaten team in the tournament.
They showed great agility, both inside the arc and from long range, and shared the workload between 2021 gold medallists Karlis Lasmanis and Nauris Miezis and young guns Francis Lacis and Zigmars Raimo.
Gold medal favourites Serbia beat the Netherlands 21-19 when Strahinja Stojacic, who was held in check up to that point, ended the contest with an extraordinary long-range two-pointer.
The Dutch got back to winning ways a few hours later with a 20-13 victory over France, who had won their first two games, and Lithuania beat Poland 21-12.
In other women’s matches, Germany inflicted a first defeat on Canada by 19-15 with a fine collective effort, France beat Azerbaijan 15-10 for their first win and Australia defeated China 21-15 for their third victory in four matches.
In the pool stage, the teams play a round robin. The top two from the pool go straight to the semi-finals and the next four teams play off for the other two spots in the last four.
(Reporting by Benjamin Mallet; Editing by Toby Davis)
Comments