Team USA Basketball Devastates Finland In FIBA World Cup! Philippines Almost Scored Upset Of The Night Pushing Croatia To Overtime!
Team USA delivered the dominance according to Team USA tradition. They destroyed late addition Finland by 59 points in their opener. All the games on opening night had the expected result, but Croatia for the scare of the tournament when low-ranked Philippines pushed them to overtime!
Team USA was the first team to score 100 points in the tournament. They were expected to do that because they have the best offensive players in the world, but they can also play fierce defense. They forced a literal shutdown of Finland in the second half-no field goals the entire second quarter!
ESPN covered the US game:
"We kind of talked a little on the bench a little bit, 'Hey, everybody remember when we scored the last time?"Finland forward Kimmo Muurinen said.
Stephen Curry of Team USA says this was not an accident: "Our coaches were encouraging us to keep up that effort by telling us every timeout, every dead ball, they only had two points or whatever. That's just motivation to keep doing what we're doing."
More notes on the game:
"Every U.S. player scored. Derrick Rose finished with 12 points and Rudy Gay had 10 as the Americans shot 59 percent from the field."
On the controversial Wild Card selection of Finland:
"Finland finished just ninth in last year's European championship, failing to qualify automatically for the World Cup. But the Finns, ranked 39th , became the lowest-ranked team ever to receive a wild card, with basketball governing FIBA noting Finland's improvement on the court and the strength of its fan base.
And it didn't hurt that Finnish company Rovio, maker of the Angry Birds games, offered to provide advertising for FIBA if Finland was selected."
The Philippines, who qualified by finishing second in the FIBA Asia tournament last year, is ranked 41st, but they scared a confident Croatia team-a European basketball juggernaut which has five players with NBA involvement (including 12th overall pick in the 2014 NBA draft Dario Saric). Croatia escaped with a 81-78 win as Philippines' guard Jayson Williams missed a three point shot at the buzzer.
The NBA players led the way for both teams-Bojan Bogdanovich (Brooklyn Nets) had 26 for Croatia and Andray Blatche (currently a free agent, last seen with the Brooklyn Nets last season) had 28 points and 12 rebounds.