It’s academic, but just for the record, the U.S. women have qualified for the 2020 Olympics.
We’re about to learn the tournament MVP, which surely would have gone to Liz Cambage if Australia had even made it close in the final. Now it’s a tough call. The USA have no single player who stands out. Breanna Stewart led the team in scoring with 16.3 points per game. Brittney Griner, who only played four of the six games, was second at 12.8 and was dominant in the final, shutting down Cambage and being a consistent scoring threat as the USA broke open the game.
Griner, predictably, wins the player of the game award for the final.
The “All-Star Five” is ...
- Liz Cambage, Australia (and she gets a warm ovation this time, not the whistles and jeers she experienced from the Spanish fans during the final)
- Emma Meesseman, Belgium (can’t argue with that after leading a non-traditional power to fourth place)
- Astou Ndour, Spain (14.1 points per game, 4.1 rebounds, four blocks in a losing effort in the semifinal vs. Australia)
- Stewart
- Diana Taurasi! Mild surprise that it’s not Griner, but the veteran had 26 points in the semifinal.
We get confirmation that one of these five is the player of the tournament, and it’s ... Stewart. Not the most explosive final, but she had double digits all six games. She’s also the WNBA MVP.
And with that, we’ll bid farewell after an emphatic World Cup final performance from the undisputed top team in the world. Thanks for joining us.
THE USA WINS THE WORLD CUP
Final score: 73-56, as Tess Lavey hits a 3-pointer at the buzzer to cut it to 17.
Let’s not undersell this accomplishment. Australia and Spain have strong programs. Tall players are no longer a novelty in women’s basketball. As in women’s soccer, international players frequently come to the USA for college and pro ball.
And this was clinical. Brittney Griner shut down the tournament’s leading scorer. The old gunslingers, Diana Taurasi and Sue Bird, hit shots that killed any momentum Australia ever had.
Hail the worthy world champions.
USA 71-51 Australia, 1:07, fourth quarter
Cambage’s day is done. Alex Bunton, who hasn’t played much has been impressive, hits a free throw. Everyone ready for the medal ceremony?
USA 71-50 Australia, 2:15, fourth quarter
Suddenly, it’s a run-and-gun game. Loyd and O’Hea trade buckets, and Kelsey Plum hits a strong shot in the lane.
USA 67-48 Australia, 3:06, fourth quarter
Tess Madgen hits a difficult driving shot, and Cambage hits two free throws. It’s a bit late, but they’re nice plays.
USA 65-44 Australia, 5:14, fourth quarter
ESPN’s commentators are hailing U.S. coach Dawn Staley, a fantastic guard in her day and now an accomplished college coach who has built a powerhouse at South Carolina.
Kelsey Plum and Morgan Tuck join the fray for the first time.
USA 63-42 Australia, 6:36, fourth quarter
A U.S. miss, Australia goes off to the races, a player runs wide open down the lane, and the pass is behind her. That kind of day.
Always look on the bright side of life ...
Game-high lead for @usabasketball at the last change. Smith leads the way with 10pts, O'Hea has 3asts and while the ball isn't dropping for Cambage she has 5pts, 11rebs, 1ast, 1stl and 4blks.
— Basketball Australia (@BasketballAus) September 30, 2018
🇦🇺 38-61 🇺🇸 | 3QT#GoOpals #FIBAWWC
USA 63-40 Australia, 8:31, fourth quarter
Australia gets the first two points of the quarter, and A’Ja Wilson answers eight seconds later. It’s just not happening for the Opals.
Some stats ...
Cambage is -25 for Australia, worst on the team. She has five points.
Alanna Smith leads Australia with 10 points.
Brittney Griner leads the USA with 15 points, then Taurasi with 13 and a quiet 10 for Breanna Stewart.
The fact that players with the quality of Stewart and Elena Delle Donne are hardly even necessary in this game is all you need to know about the depth of this U.S. team.
The foregone conclusion of the fourth quarter starts now.
USA 61-38 Australia, end of third quarter
Jewell Loyd swats away an Australian drive. Bec Allen lets fly for three, but it’s way off.
26-11 to the USA in the third quarter, and the Australian resistance has collapsed.
USA 58-38 Australia, 1:10, third quarter
Australia needs to spread the floor, and they do, getting a 3 from Jenna O’Hea. They rush it the next time down, though, and Griner again gets the better of Cambage. She scores and goes to the line. The free throw is missed, but Delle Donne snares it for the USA, and Griner drives back to the hoop. The leads is 20.
USA 52-36 Australia, 2:30, third quarter
Taurasi replaces Bird, takes the inbounds pass in the corner and flings a wild shot over Cambage that goes ... straight through the hoop. How does she do that?
Cambage gets to the line at the other end for more misadventures, finally hitting the second of two for her fifth point.
USA 49-35 Australia, 3:19, third quarter
So you take Cambage out, but then who can stop Griner? The towering American roams through the lane to score and convert a three-point play. Another Smith 3-pointer answers, but then Nneka Ogwumike -- playing for the first time in this game -- pushes the lead back to 14.
USA 44-32 Australia, 4:30, third quarter
Alex Bunton cleans up a miss and scores the first Australian points of the half. Alanna Smith follows with a three.
USA 44-27 Australia, 5:17, third quarter
Cambage gets a nice block on Stewart’s reverse layup attempt. Five seconds later, she flings the ball away. Griner returns the other way with an easy basket, and we get a timeout.
USA is too big for the size of Cambage to have much of an effect. Australia’s defense is great without her on the floor, it might be worth a go taking her out of the game for a stretch #FIBAWWC
— Huw Hopkins (@coach_huw) September 30, 2018
Looks like that’s what we may see here.
USA 42-27 Australia, 6:25, third quarter
Cambage gets a piece of a Griner shot, then misses a shot of her own at the other end. Stewart extends the U.S. lead, and the atmosphere at this game is dead.
USA 40-27 Australia, 6:48, third quarter
Ebzery gets open but flings a horrible shot in the vicinity of the basket. Griner is called for an offensive foul.
Cambage finally gets a good touch on the offensive end, drawing a foul from Taurasi. She misses the first free throw. And the second. Yikes.
USA 40-27 Australia, 8:55, third quarter
Taurasi finds Griner all alone in the paint. Seemed like she gave half a through to dunking it but settles for the simple layup. Far too simple if you’re coaching Australia.
USA 38-27 Australia, 9:30, third quarter
We’re back. Can Cambage starting hitting shots?
Sue Bird can. She arcs a beautiful 3-point shot that gently breezes through the net.
Brick, brick, free throws, brick
The USA has hit nine shots from the floor. In 36 attempts. That’s 25%. They’re actually better from beyond the arc (4/11) than they are from inside (5/25). Brittney Griner, while shutting down Liz Cambage defensively, is 1-for-7.
But the Americans are 13-for-15 from the line. Diana Taurasi, the USA’s leading scorer with 10, is 7-for-8.
Australia is shooting a little better from inside (11/27) but has hit only one 3-pointer (of 12 attempts) and two free throws. No Opal has more than four points, though Cambage has seven rebounds already.
USA 35-27 Australia, halftime
Another U.S. bad shot and an Australian fling at the buzzer have no impact on the score.
It’s halftime, and we’ll try to sum up the awful shooting percentages shortly.
USA 35-27 Australia, 0:27, second quarter
Not a lot of offensive highlights near the end of the first half aside from an alert jumper from Katie Ezbery. Then it’s just turnovers and bad shots.
USA 35-23 Australia, 2:29, second quarter
Fouling Diana Taurasi on 3-point attempts is not a sound defensive strategy. She hits all three, and it’s an 8-0 run and a timeout.
USA 32-23 Australia, 4:01, second quarter
Griner blocks a shot and gives a finger wag. Sue Bird puts down her AARP magazine and hits a three to push the lead to nine again.
Liz Cambage will have a lot of boos from the fans tonight after she taunted the fans while playing against the host Spain in the semis. Each time she gets to the paint, the Spanish fans boo her #FIBAWWC #FIBAWWC2018
— ACLSports (@acl_sports) September 30, 2018
USA 27-23 Australia, 4:01, second quarter
Cambage and Taurasi trade bad passes. Then a Magbegor drive cuts the lead to four!
USA 27-21 Australia, 4:48, second quarter
Cambage finally has some impact, snagging a rebound and flinging it over the Americans to Steph Talbot, who draws a foul and sinks two free throws.
Griner hits one of two the other way.
USA 26-19 Australia, 5:50, second quarter
Defense and sloppy passing are the keywords right now.
19-year-old Ezi Magbegor breaks the drought with a drive down the left with the only U.S. defender screened.
Updated
USA 26-17 Australia, 7:02, second quarter
Cambage is rattled. She throws up a wild shot under pressure on the baseline, hitting nothing.
USA 22-15 Australia, 8:11, second quarter
Jewell Loyd starts the U.S. scoring in the second with a nice drive. Australia finally brings back Cambage.
USA 20-15 Australia, end of first quarter
The boxscore is quite a sight. Three Australian players are -10 in plus/minus. Cambage is -8. Three others are +5.
Quite a turnaround, and the U.S. defense will need to shut that back door.
USA 20-15 Australia, 0:22, first quarter
Madgen launches a wild 3-point attempt. The USA gains possession, but Australia puts the clamps on defense, and Bunton goes the other way to make it a 7-0 run. Taurasi hits a pair of free throws to stop the damage.
USA 18-13 Australia, 1:18, first quarter
Sue Bird and Breanna Stewart throw up a pair of bricks from beyond the arc. But Australia can’t do anything going the other way, and Taurasi is fouled on a 3-point attempt. She makes two of three.
But Samantha Whitcomb hits a three, the USA rushes its next possession, Alanna Smith drives the other way, and Tess Madgen cleans up -- we have a ball game!
USA 13-6 Australia, 3:40, first quarter
Stanford senior Alanna Smith beats the U.S. defense back door for a layup and makes it four straight on the next possession.
USA 13-2 Australia, 5:17, first quarter
The Griner-Cambage matchup is all Griner at the moment. The American posts up Cambage, hits the short shot and draws the foul. She converts the three-point play. Cambage is 0-for-3 from the field after posting that extraordinary shooting percentage coming into the final.
USA 10-2 Australia, 6:06, first quarter
The good news: Australia leads 2-0 since ESPN finally switched over. Katie Ezbery with the jumper.
USA 10-0 Australia, 6:48, first quarter
Charles hits two free throws just before MLS finally cedes the ESPN airwaves.
At present there is some soccer game on ESPN. Have they bumped the World Cup to another channel?
— womenshoopsworld (@hoopism) September 30, 2018
USA 8-0 Australia, 8:03, first quarter
Will ESPN cut to this game while it’s still in doubt?
Stewart and Taurasi with three each, then Tina Charles with two. And Griner has blocked a Cambage layup.
Opening tip
Griner wins it for the USA. Hope I’m not spoiling anything for U.S. audiences listening to MLS commentators yammering on and on about Atlanta United and the Red Bulls. Come on, guys -- world championship at stake here.
The U.S. attack is more balanced than the Force would’ve been if Anakin Skywalker hadn’t turned to the Dark Side. Breanna Stewart, a 24-year-old Seattle Storm forward, leads the way with 17.6 points per game. Then it’s the ageless Diana Taurasi and Brittney Griner at 12.0 each. A’Ja Wilson and Tina Charles are also in double digits, and Elena Delle Donne -- ironically labeled a “small forward” at 6-foot-5 but certainly possessing perimeter skills -- is close at 9.3.
Basically, everyone on this team can score and collect rebounds. For assists, turn to Sue Bird, still dishing them out at age 37.
Updated
Australia’s big hope is indeed a big player. Not many players in women’s basketball are more than two meters tall, but Liz Cambage, who plays in the WNBA for the Dallas Wings, clears that mark by a couple of centimeters. (For those of you who prefer the non-metric system, it’s 6-foot-a-lot. Officially, they’re saying 6-8.)
Cambage has averaged 27.2 points per game, nearly nine points ahead of the second-top scorer, Belgium’s Emma Meesseman. She has only played 22.5 minutes per game, so even the mathematically challenged can see she’s averaging more than a point a minute. She has hit 68.4% of her two-point shots and one of two 3-pointers. In the semifinal win over Spain, she scored 33 points, including a clutch 11-of-12 free throws, and had 15 rebounds and four blocks.
The USA will counter with its own 2.03-meter player, Brittney Griner.
Preamble
The USA-USSR rivalry in women’s basketball is long gone, and Russia hasn’t been a factor in recent years.
And we’re not getting a USA-Europe matchup here, which just gives European fans more time to celebrate the Ryder Cup rout. Host Spain won the all-European third-place matchup against Belgium 67-60 earlier today.
But the matchup we have instead is every bit as compelling. The U.S. women can count their losses in World Cup and Olympic competition over the past 30 years on one hand, but this final will not be easy. Australia upset the hosts in the semifinals after cruising through the group stage and the quarterfinals. The Opals are also the last team other than the USA to win this trophy, back in 2006, so this is indeed a battle of the last two champions.
Thanks for joining us for what should be a barnburner.
Beau will be here shortly, in the meantime here’s Anya Alvarez’s interview with US Olympic champion Elena Delle Donne:
Six years into her WNBA career, Elena Delle Donne appears to be at peace. Things that may have bothered her in the past, no longer weigh so heavily. As a result, she is playing some of the best basketball of her life. The guard-forward is averaging 20.4 points per game, and reached 3,000 career points this season, becoming the fastest player to do so in WNBA history. The 2015 MVP also played in her fifth All-Star game, this time as captain. And that’s before you consider the fact that she helped lead her team, the Washington Mystics, to the brink of a championship before coming up short in the WNBA finals against the Seattle Storm.
“This has been a great year for me, there’s no denying that,” Delle Donne tells the Guardian.
You can read the full interview here:
