The USA Basketball National Team had its Achilles heel exposed in Australia, but taking advantage of it will be easier said than done if the squad's 7-0 effort in winning the Opals' World Basketball Challenge Tournament is any indication.
Despite some dreadful rebounding numbers and little inside production other than that of Lisa Leslie, the USA team averaged 87.7 points per game in three wins over Australia and two victories apiece over Ukraine and Cuba. The trio of Leslie, Sheryl Swoopes and Ruthie Bolton averaged 43.3 points per game to help the USA team improve its unblemished record to 46-0 in its 24th consecutive win against international competition. While the USA's ability to play pressure defense and run the court was impressive, its lack of rebounding and an effective half-court offense could give hope to the Aussies, Brazil and China, all of whom have the ability to control a game's tempo and pound the boards.
No one yet has been able to deal with the USA's quickness at every position, although Australia made a run at it in losing three games by 15, 9 and 9 points. The Aussies rode tourney MVP Michelle Timms's 27 points to a 70-70 tie with 6:04 remaining, but Teresa Edwards came off the bench to drain a pair of treys and Swoopes added another and two free throws,leading an 11-2 run over the next four minutes that led to a final score of 87-78.
A soon-to-be four-time Olympian, Edwards has made a reputation as a pressure player. She'd hit only two of her previous 25 threes, but timing is everything, and Edwards' timing kept the USA ledger perfect.
Swoopes and Bolton tallied 20 points apiece as the USA team shot a torrid 54.1 percent from the floor to Australia's 38.9 percent. In seven games in Australia, the US held opponents to 39.1 percent shooting, and that kind of defensive pressure will have to continue for the USA National Team to move on to Olympic gold two months from now in Atlanta.
Holding opponents to 39 percent shooting is doubly impressive when the bulk of it was accomplished without the inside presence of Katrina McClain, who was sidelined for the last six of the seven games Down Under. When McClain went down with a sprained ankle at the end of the opener, coach Tara VanDerveer's worst nightmare came true. She's bemoaned her club's lack of an inside aircraft carrier since the club was put together last year, and the search for the 12th player to make-up the final Olympic Team has centered on filling that need. Sure, 6-3 Sylvia Crawley was added to the USA roster for the Aussie tour, but replacing the club's leading rebounder and most physical inside presence was not going to be easy.
In fact, it turned out to be impossible. With McClain out, the Americans were pounded on the offensive boards for four straight games. Only against Australia in the final did the Americans have the edge on the offensive boards, but only by one, while against Ukraine (17-11 and 15-8), Cuba (21-12), and earlier against Australia (15-12), the margins were dismal.
The Cuba numbers are disconcerting in light of the outcome a week earlier when the two teams opened the tourney May 6, with McClain scoring 22 points and leading the USA to a 64-41 edge on the boards and a 26-14 edge on the offensive glass. The former University of Georgia star sprained her ankle with 3:24 remaining in what would be a 108-80 victory over a Cuban club that was playing without the services of one of its stronger players. Less than a week later, the Cubans were still without their standout and still beaten 108-79, but they nearly doubled the USA number of offensive boards despite losing the overall board battle by five.
The overall stats from the Australia tour show the USA out-rebounding foes by an average of three boards a game, 38.7-34.1, but you can bet that not a single coach in the tourney missed the offensive glass numbers that showed the USA losing that battle, 78-54, in the six games without McClain. A quick look down the stats sheet shows that after Lisa Leslie's 9.1 per game board average, the next best rebounding numbers came from Sheryl Swoopes (4.6), Carla McGhee (4.4), and Ruthie Bolton (4.3).
The US team did a great job of hassling shooters, but keeping teams off the boards and away from easy second shots was a problem that it will take more than McClain to solve. VanDerveer has fit her system to take advantage of McClain, a physical 6-2, and Leslie, a lean 6-4, but when one of those two goes down or out, the US team is vulnerable.
McGhee started five of the seven games on the tour as McClain's replacement, and she averaged 5.3 points per game on 37 percent shooting. Her 35 field goal attempts from the floor ranked her fourth on the team behind Leslie, Bolton and Swoopes, but her shooting percentage left her ahead of only Crawley, whose 2-of-11 effort for the tour did nothing to earn her more minutes. McGhee's best effort came in the second win over Cuba, where she totalled 16 points on five-of-seven shooting.
Nikki McCray and Katy Steding also stepped up in McClain's absence. McCray averaged 3.1 boards and 5.9 points on 54 percent shooting in a little less than 11 minutes a game and Steding had a 14-point game in the second win over Cuba. Steding hit six of the seven shots she took in the most recent win over Cuba, and buried both her three-point tries. USA fans had to hope it would give Steding some renewed confidence in her outside shot, but she missed the two trey attempts she took in the last two wins of the tour and ended the trip hitting 2-of-10 from three-point land.
The Australian tour was a pre-Olympic test of sorts as the U.S., Australia, Ukraine and Cuba all find themselves in Group B in the 1996 Summer Olympic Games. Zaire and South Korea round out the six-team pool. The USA Basketball National Team has not played Zaire and has beaten South Korea by 25 and 29 points in two meetings.
The Ukraine has yet to come within single digits of the US and is winless in seven tries. The Cubans are 0-5 against the USA Basketball National Team, but their 81-78 loss on March 14 is the closest the USA club has come to losing this year.
Group A includes defending world champion Brazil, America's zone champion Canada, Asian zone champion China, Italy, Japan and Russia.
McClain will be back for the domestic tour and upcoming three-game Candian series, but the search for inside help continues. Venus Lacy, a 6-4 two-time Olympic Trials participant from Lousiana Tech, will join the team as the 12th player for the May 26 game with Cuba and the June 4, 7 and 9 contests against Canada. Lacy has played professionally for six years and averaged 9.4 ppg and 3.8 rpg as a member of the USA team that took the bronze medal in the 1991 Pan American Games.
The USA Basketball Women's Player Selection Committee is expected to announce in mid-June the names of the 12-woman U.S. Olympic Basketball Team, and six remaining players will serve as alternates in case of injury or illness. Lacy is one of 18 finalists anounced May 9. In addition to Lacy and the 11-woman USA Basketball National Team members, the finalist list includes posts Shanda Berry (Iowa '89), Crawley (North Carolina '95) and Kara Wolters (Connecticut '97), and perimeter players Edna Campbell (Texas '91), Katie Smith (Ohio State '95) and Teresa Weatherspoon (Louisiana Tech '88).
Hopefully, whoever is chosen will be able to get to the boards.
