Who else is excited to see this matchup?? The Boomers were the only team to really give the US a run for their money this go around, in the last warm up before the Olympics (Without Bogut, who has started to hit his stride in pool play). Since they lost by 11 in Shanghai, the USA has avg. a 30pt winning margin in pool play. Now the Boomers get to go all out, with nothing to lose, and with Bogut in there now as well! I think this is gonna be the best game of the tournament, I don't expect us aussies to win, but I think we are gonna make it the toughest on the US! It will be a cakewalk to the gold after this for the US, but anything can happen, and i'll be cheerin on the BOOMERS to get make the huge upset! NOTHIN TO LOSE.... ANYTHING IS POOSSIBBUUULLEEE!!!! lol
This is the quarterfinals. Just saying. Should be a good one , but as good as this USA team has been this can very easily be ANOTHER blowout.
No contest? Bull****. The only way USA can win is by getting points inside and on the fastbreak. SO AUstralia has to limit there turnover, make there open shoots and work hard in transition to stop the fastbreak. They can heavily guard the inside as TEAM USA has shoot terribly from the outside and other than Michael Reed have no three point shooters (alot of slashers). On the offensive end we need to get ANstey and Bogut on the floor together hitting there three point shoots. Bogut has shoot up around 60% from three in the last two games, and against Lithuania Bogut and ANstey shoot 100% from three. Stretch Team USA offensivly, by hiting open three's and shut down there fast break game, by getting back quickly and limiting turnovers.
^^^^^^ When he says "shoots/shoot" he generally means "shot/shots" As far as I'm concerned, Australia will win. By at least 50 points.
If Team USA plays defense like they have, zero chance of losing. If the Australian players are like some of you guys and expect to face the same distracted squad they played a couple of weeks ago, the awakening will be very rude. In fact, that earlier close game will play to Team USA's advantage because they won't let it happen again. Let's see how the stupid "#6" and "#8" nonsense (or whatever gimmick) plays a second time around. If Team USA is smart, they will use it as fuel to motivate a huge slapdown of these smartalecks.
US shot 42.3% and 48.0% from the 3 point line in their last 2 games. They're more than capable of hitting the long distance 2's pretending to be 3's.
Face it, there's just no way your team is going to beat the US. It's not an insult to your team, just a cold hard fact. You make it sound like the Kobe and co. are the underdogs with comments like these: Sorry, but the US is too talented to be beaten by Bogut and friends. They can take care of the ball all they want but the Americans are still going rip it from their hands and dunk it on their heads. Oh, and they'll throw in a couple of 3's just to keep the D honest.
Boomers need to shoot lights out from the perimeter, pack the paint and slow it down to a half court game. If they can shoot as well as they did against Lithuania, it will be an exciting game.
australia is not a better team than spain, greece or even china or germany so anything but a 20+ blowout would be a huge sensation.
Well being Aussie I'm definitely rooting for the Australian team and hoping they'll win, but I doubt it. Australia just isn't good enough to stop USA, they got pretty close though at the exhibition match, but I dunno - can you really judge off that? (since I doubt the USA team was putting their all for the whole match) It might be close though, but in the end USA will win.
if the game vs. australia will be a close one team usa won't win the gold. they'll get blown out by the elite teams then (which australia is not). this won't happen. germany came close to beating the usa in an exhibition game a couple of years ago as well. team usa needed a halfcourt buzzer beater from iverson to win that game. those games mean nothing at all. also, you can see how much team usa improved through out this tournament by looking at their first 2 games. in the first one vs. china team usa looked like it had not learned anything at all from the last couple of years. then, in the 2nd game vs. angola team usa only won by 21 points (which is almost the worst points differential vs. angola). but after those 2 games team usa found it's identity and dominated the best teams in their group. i just don't see how the aussies will make that a close one. they don't even have the star power that teams like germany, china or spain had.
A champion team always > a team of champions. One thing I PROMISE We will not get done by 50 like Germany did. As a matter of fact - if we get beaten by more than 40 I will NEVER post on Clutchfans EVER AGAIN
