was stay in a stance, close out and rebound, and I think we did those three things pretty well throughout the whole game. We made sure that we always had the upper hand on Russia.”
Getting off to a quick start, the
USA built a 13-3 lead with just under four minutes left in the first quarter after a Hooper jump shot. Making her first start of the competi- tion, Hooper played a critical role in the USA building an early lead as she scored seven points and reeled in four rebounds in the opening quarter. Russia tightened the score to 19-13 before Mosqueda-Lewis hit a 3-pointer to end the scoring in the first period with the USA ahead 22-13.
Russia started the second quarter
with an 8-3 run that included six- straight points that prompted Coale to call a timeout with 7:46 remaining and the USA lead down to 25-21. Mosqueda-Lewis nailed another 3-pointer to stop the run, and the USA outscored Russia 16-6 over the remainder of the half, including eight points and two 3-pointers from Bradford.
spark and intensity into the game, and that's what I knew I had to do,” said Bradford on her contributions to the USA’s 41-27 halftime lead. “I'm just happy that I could do that for my team.”
Despite falling behind by as many as
15 points early after halftime, midway through the third quarter, Russia began to build some momentum and scored four-straight points to cut the U.S. lead to 50-42 with 5:14 to play in the period. Hartley immediately answered, however, hitting a 3-pointer assisted by Massengale 10 seconds later to put the USA back up 11 points. Russia would not bring its deficit to single digits again.
Following a steal by Harberts,
Hartley scored on a fast break layup. Next, Massengale made a driving lay-in on the right side, which preceded another Hartley 3-pointer assisted by Massengale. With 3:17 to play in the third quarter, Hartley and Massengale, who finished with a game-high five assists, had pushed the U.S. lead to 60-44 – at that point the USA’s largest lead of the night. “Ariel did a good job of pushing the
78
“It's an unexplainable feeling,” said
Bradford on how she felt when the final horn sounded. “I wouldn't want to have it with anyone but these 11 girls. I think everybody on this team deserved it. We all worked hard. The best feeling is it wasn't given to us. We worked for it, so to say we deserved it is huge.” “I think our success speaks to the
selflessness of these guys on this team who were willing to play roles, whatever those roles might be, different roles on different nights,” said Coale on what made it so special to win with this col- lection of players. “Guys who were willing to buy in and be respectful of our coaching staff and try to do it the way that we asked. You couldn't do that without them being mature enough to do that, and they did in a great way.” For the game, the USA shot 52.2
Crystal Bradford was a valuable spark for the USA squad off the bench who averaged 10.8 points and 4.7 rebounds a game, while hitting 60.4 percent of her shots.
“I'm coming off the bench to bring a
ball, and she was able to find me on those two threes,” said Hartley on the game-changing sequence. “A lot of the stuff we did sparked off our defense. We were able to get some stops and get some rebounds and push it.” The USA’s lead would balloon to
68-47 heading into the fourth quarter. Two free throws by Sims gave the USA its largest advantage of the game at 73-49 with 9:26 to play, and Russia was kept at bay, never closing the margin any closer than 15 points in the final period.
After letting a 17-point fourth
quarter lead slip away in the semifinals against Australia before coming back to win, the USA never let its foot off the gas. “With two minutes left,” said Coale
when asked at what point she felt com- fortable with the lead. “I just didn't feel like anything was safe and tried to focus on every possession. But with about two minutes left, it felt pretty good.” Sims scored the final bucket for the
USA with 44 seconds remaining before Russia’s Nadezhda Grishaeva scored to bring the score to the final tally of 90-71. As the co-MVP Sims dribbled out the clock, the USA began celebrating.
percent from the field (35-67 FGs), 45.0 percent from 3-point territory (9-20 3pt FGs) and 73.3 percent from the line (11-15 FTs).
USA 90, Russia 71 July 15, 2013
USA Sims
Hartley Hooper
MIN FG FT R A PF PTS 27 3- 7 3- 4 0 30 10 21 6- 7 3- 4 1 14 17 31 4- 8 0- 0 9 22 9
M.-Lewis 33 6-12 0- 0 4 22 15 Plaisance 17 4-12 1- 2 6 13 9 Massengale 15 1- 3 0- 0 1 51 2 Ellenberg 10 1- 3 0- 0 0 12 2 Schimmel 3 0- 0 0- 0 0 10 0 Bradford 11 6- 9 2- 3 2 01 16 Gray
Liston RUS
1 0- 0 0- 0 0 00 0 6 1- 1 0- 0 3 00 2
Harberts 25 3- 5 2- 2 1 32 8 Totals
Logunova 31 6-10 0- 0 7 40 12 Abrikosova 23 2- 6 2- 2 3 03 7 Finogentova 21 0- 5 0- 0 0 31 0 Shilova Vieru
11 2- 5 0- 0 2 00 4 25 5- 7 3- 8 9 23 13
Grigoryeva 23 4-10 4- 4 2 22 12 Mayorova 20 2- 5 0- 0 0 12 5 Dorosheva 22 3- 8 0- 0 4 12 9 Paskalenko 6 0- 0 0- 0 0 01 0 Loginova 5 0- 3 0- 0 0 11 0 Grishaeva 13 3- 6 3- 4 2 12 9 Totals
USA Russia
200 27-65 12-18 29 15 17 71 22 19 27 22 -- 90
13 14 20 24 -- 71
3-PT FGs-USA (9-20): Mosqueda-Lewis 3-6, Hartley 2-3, Bradford 2-3, Hooper 1-3, Sims 1-2, Plaisance 0-3; Russia (5-24): Dorosheva 3-7, Abrikosova 1-4, Mayorova 1-3, Logunova 0-2, Finogentova 0-2, Shilova 0-2, Grigoryeva 0-2, Loginova 0-2. TO-USA 16, Russia 19; BLKS-USA 2, Russia 2; STLS-USA 9, Russia 6.
USA Basketball News
200 35-67 11-15 27 19 17 90 MIN FG FT R A PF PTS
Jenny Maag/USA Basketball
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