No team enjoys being knocked out of a tournament. Obviously, losing is the worst, but you’d be hard-pressed to think of a more painful tournament exit than what happened to the Argentina women’s basketball team.
Ahead of Wednesday’s game against Colombia at the Pan American Games in Lima, Peru, the Argentinian national team showed up wearing their navy blue uniforms, but as the away team, they were supposed to be wearing white.
Because Colombia’s uniforms were also dark blue, Argentina was given 15 minutes to change into the correct color jerseys or forfeit the game. They could not, however, meet that deadline.
Via ESPN:
The blunder prompted the resignation of women’s basketball development director Karina Rodriguez and Argentina team leader Hernan Amaya.
“It’s one of the saddest moments of my career,” Amaya said. “I take full responsibility for what happened.”
The 20-0 forfeit eliminated Argentina from advancing to the group stages. And despite the blunder, they still had to take on the Virgin Islands in a meaningless group stage game on Thursday.
The team wore the white uniforms this time.
