Nigel Williams-Goss (left), Rasheed Sulaimon (middle) and Michael Frazier (right) provided USA head coach Billy Donovan with plenty of speed and firepower at the guard position. The talented trio accounted for 86.4 percent of the USA’s made 3-point shots.
Serbia led 9-5 early and the U.S.,
with Sulaimon contributing five points, went on a 9-0 run to move ahead 13-9. Thanks to a Sulaimon 3-pointer with 38 seconds left in the opening stanza the USA took a 26-22 lead into the second quarter.
USA 82, Serbia 68 July 7, 2013
USA
Harrell Stokes Payton
Winslow Gordon Tobey Okafor
MIN FG FT R A PF PTS 28 8-16 1- 3 4 23 17 14 2- 4 0- 0 4 00 4 26 4- 5 1- 1 1 63 9
Sulaimon 27 4-14 2- 2 1 01 12 Smart
23 5- 9 1- 6 3 33 11 6 0- 1 0- 0 1 05 0 15 3- 5 0- 0 6 24 6 4 1- 2 0- 0 3 01 2 11 3- 3 0- 0 4 02 6
Williams-Goss 29 6- 9 1- 2 1 11 15 Frazier
SRB
Novak Micic
Jokic
Totals USA
Serbia
Robinson 2 0- 1 0- 0 0 00 0 Totals
Jankovic 27 4- 9 1- 7 8 00 9 Andric Salic
4 1- 1 0- 0 0 01 2 37 7-14 2- 2 3 12 21 31 3- 4 6- 6 0 10 3 13
Milutinov 25 2- 4 3- 4 6 13 7 Pot
26 14 17 25 -- 82 22 16 13 17 -- 68
3PT FGs-USA (4-14): Sulaimon 2-6, Williams-Goss 2-3, Smart 0-2, Frazier 0-2, Robinson 0-1; Serbia (9-20): Novak 5-8, Jokic 2-4, Andric 1-5, Micic 1-2, Pot 0-1; TO-USA 12, Serbia 17; BLKS-USA 4, Serbia 2; STLS-USA11, Serbia 4.
USA Basketball
23 0- 3 0- 0 1 22 0 19 4- 7 0- 2 3 02 10 200 22-48 15-24 28 14 14 68
15 0- 2 0- 0 6 10 0 200 36-71 6-14 39 15 23 82 MIN FG FT R A PF PTS 34 1- 6 3- 3 4 01 6
Leading 32-29, the USA’s Tobey and
Okafor scored back-to-back buckets to up the USA’s lead to 36-29, but Serbia outscored the U.S. 9-4 to end the quarter, leaving the Americans ahead 40-38.
The game remained up for grabs as
the score stood at 48-47 in favor of the Americans with 4:28 left in the third. Williams-Goss connected on a 3-pointer, then the U.S. press forced Serbia into a turnover that resulted in a steal by Gordon, who fed Sulaimon for a score. Next Smart tipped one in at the rim and just like that the USA lead had ballooned to 55-47.
Leading 57-51 going into the final
10 minutes, Serbia scored first to cut the lead to four, 57-53, but that was as close as they would get as the U.S. countered with seven consecutive points and a 13-1 overall run that left it in front 70-54 with 7:01 to play. From there, the lead never dipped below 12 points as the U.S. posted the 82-68 win.
“I thought a couple of things hap-
pened to us,” explained Donovan. “One, I think (Justise) Winslow, (Aaron) Gordon and (Marcus) Smart getting in foul trouble in the first half, those are three of our better pressing guys. We were never able to get the style of play, the tempo we really wanted and we were probably a little bit slower in certain cases then we would have been if those guys were on the floor.
“I thought in the third quarter, although we had to rest Justise because
he had four fouls, we got back a little bit more to playing our style and we decided to go small and do a lot of switching. Really I thought Gordon and Harrell, and even when Justise fouled out we put Marcus (Smart) at the four spot, but we just played small and I thought our press and our quickness and our speed was so much more disruptive in the second half than the first half because of the foul trouble we had to endure.”
Serbia shot 59.1 percent from the
field over the first two quarters, and was 5-of-10 from 3-point, and the U.S. was only able to force six turnovers. The sec- ond half was a different story. Cranking up its defensive intensity, the USA limit- ed Serbia to 34.6 percent shooting in the third and fourth quarters and chased them into 11 turnovers.
“Serbia is a great team and they run
their stuff very well and they make you pay,” said Smart. “They have a lot of great shooters so it is kind of hard, you have to guard the 3-point line and protect the basket.
“We knew that they were going to
get worn down and that was our goal, just keep bringing the pressure, a hun- dred times more in the second half and eventually they were going to wear down.”
“It was very satisfying to come
away knowing we did what we had to do and to come away with our goal and that was to win the gold medal,” added Marcus Smart.
45
FIBA
FIBA
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