Hard Luck Beijing

Day 1 of the Good Luck Beijing Tournament didn't go well for either of "our" teams.

USA lost to Australia 60-74. Coach Anne Donovan was of course disappointed with the result, but thought the team did a nice job after four days of practice. They know that they are going to continue to improve and play better throughout the tournament.

The game was even until the last nine minutes. Then Australia went on a 13-3 run, and the USA never caught up.

The USA struggled with its outside shooting, to say the least. They made just 2-0f-19 from beyond the arc. Candice played 26 minutes and was 0-8 on 3-pointers.

Here is the full game report from USA Basketball. It includes a link to the box score.

New Zealand's loss to Cuba 71-75 was perhaps even more disappointing. New Zealand have come close to beating Cuba (ranked eighth in the world) several times over the past three years. They were ahead after three quarters, but couldn't hold them off down the stretch.

Clare started, played 18 minutes, scored seven points and had three steals. Jillian came off the bench, played 23 minutes, scored six points and had two rebounds. Here is the game report from the Tall Ferns and the box score from Beijing.

There is additional information on the Tournament website:

• The home page has a game report and quotes from each of the day's games.
• The results page has cumulative statistics for each team, which will be interesting as the tournament progresses. Star List apparently will have individual player statistics. The box score for each game is linked to from the game result.
• The gallery page has a gallery of photos from each of the day's games. There's another photo of Jillian here.
• The video page includes a video of the NZ/Cuba postgame interview. Each participant speaks in their own language, but about all you can hear is the Chinese translation. The videos do not play on a Mac.