TEAM USA Drops To France

Yesterday, top favorite for winning the World Cup, Serbia, went out in the quarter-finals, while today the US team also got eliminated by France. Although the biggest NBA stars didn’t participate for the USA, they were still considered as the second favorite for retaining the title won in 2014. This is not the surprise after Turkey missed the chance to beat the Americans only due to their own mistakes and fear of a win, but such an experienced team as France knows how to grab this opportunity.

After the first quarter, teams went to the short break evens, while in the second, France started taking the main word in this match. Evan Fournier and Rudy Gobert were a dominant duo and after several very attractive actions, France managed to score 27 points into the second quarter. They had a six-point lead after the first 20 minutes of the game. France was almost in the constant lead of the match, while the US side had a maximum advantage of three points in the first quarter.

French side continued in the same fashion in the third quarter as well and their advantage rose to 10 points. However, after several mistakes in their offensive actions, they spilled everything and let go the Americans get a three-point lead. When the current world champions went seven points ahead, 72:65, even French fans doubted that their team will get back into the game and book their place in the semi-finals. In that period, France had a very bad control of a defensive rebound and they conceded a lot of second-chance points.

But something went wrong for the US team as they managed to score only three points in the last three minutes of the game, as reported by BettingTips4You stats. Their free-throws percentage went down rapidly as Donovan Mitchell and Kemba Walker missed some shots. On the other side, although they were not at the first-half level, Furnier bagged very important shots, while Gobert booked a couple of offensive rebounds which were eventually converted into points. The United States didn’t have the solution for French defense, they even missed some open shots and sitters, while French team was flying on the wings of their excellent effort. Nando De Colo’s cool head and steady arm were keeping the advantage for the French team intact as he scored five puts of six free throws. Eventually, France won by a ten-point margin, they totally deserved the victory and the chance to challenge the top spot.

The US team needed more scorers in this game as only Donovan Mitchell met the expectations with 29 points scored, although his field goals percentage went just above 50%. Kemba Walker was stopped at 10 points with a very bad evening as he scored twice from nine attempts, excluding the free-throws. They were outplayed in the paint as French side booked 16 rebounds more than their opponents. Gobert showed the class with 21 points scored and 16 rebounds, although he spent only six minutes on the bench. Both sides were a bit under 50% field goals percentage but eventually missed free throws cost the US team a win.

To summarize, France is going to take on the winner of the last quarter-finals between Australia and the Czech Republic, while the USA will play classification matches. Ironically, their first opponent is going to be Serbia, but everybody expected to see these two sides in the finals and not in the battle for the 5^th spot. The match is going to be played tomorrow and there’s a very little time for preparation, so it wouldn’t be surprising if Serbia pulls an upset as they had a day more to recover. The side which is more mentally strong should win tomorrows match.