WOMEN'S SEMI FINALS BEIJING
“For us it’s a third time round the track,”
“We are desperate. We have to take care of business on the court. We have to have a lot of passion but we cannot be emotional about it.”
A balanced attack, led by Belinda Snell’s 16 points, more than compensated for
That 16 point moved a notch up to 18 at the end of the third quarter, but the Aussies were in full force in the final ten minutes to wrap up a 44-point win.
Point guard, Kristi Harrower had 14 points, while Lauren Jackson poured in 11.
Suzy Batkovic had a game-high 13 rebounds to go with her 10 points.
“It was a pleasing result for us to beat the host nation,”
“
Bian Lan led the scoring for the Chinese with a game-high 20 points.
“The Australians are a much better team than us,”
“We weren’t able to execute our game plan. One thing is getting beaten, another thing getting whipped,” added Maher who had coached
Team
The Russians led by three points at the end of the first quarter and enhanced it 38-33 early in the second quarter. That’s when
Tina Thompson scored four points, Katie Smith and Diana Taurasi sunk a three-pointer each; and Lisa Leslie came up with a lay-up as the USA surged on a 12-0 run and the Americans went on to lead 48-40 going into the fourth quarter.
Sylvia Fowles joined the party scoring five, of her eight points for the game, in the fourth quarter as the
“We knew if we came into this tournament and didn’t shoot the ball well as was the case today, we would have to rely on our defense,”
“It came to that tonight.”
Taurasi led the scoring with a game-high 21 points, and collected nine rebounds as the
“We knew it wasn’t going to be easy as
Fowles led the rebounds with 10 collections. Thompson accounted for 15 points, with four rebounds.
“Our defense was constant, we knew that as long as we kept getting stops we’d be okay,” Katie Smith said.
“We knew that at some point in the Olympics we’d have a rough offensive game.”
The
“We knew we had to defend or else it was going to be a long night,” Donovan said. “Our girls did that very well.”
Russians did well in the first half, but their American import Becky Hammon was a non-participant.
The CSKA Moscow guard, who took Russian citizenship earlier this year, scored her first point of the game – a free-throw conversion – in the early moments of the fourth quarter and found her only field success with 2:52 left in the game.
“There were two people on me every time,” Hammon said.
“They are very quick to get the ball out of my hands. I did my best, sometimes it’s better than other days, the effort was there. We still have another game.”
Maria Stepanova was the highest scorer for
Scores
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