are you kidding me? australia isn't an elite team. what is this arrogance based upon? australia is tied 9th (with germany) on the current fiba world ranking. china is 11th. at the 2002 world chmapionships germany was 3rd, china was 12th and australia wasn't even qualified. 2004 in athens china made it to the quarter finals of the olympic basketball tournament, australia did not. at the 2006 world championships germany was 8th, australia was 13th and china was 15th. your australian team has already lost to croatia in beijing by 15 points. croatia isn't really better than germany or china. you guys got lucky that you are in group a. in group b you probably wouldn't have made it to the quarter finals. i have nothing against australia. you have a solid basketball team. but get real, you don't have an elite team. you'll lose by at least 20 points vs. team usa. every team that's not going to win a medal will.
i'm not expecting this either. germany normally also wouldn't lose by 50 points with dirk and kaman. this game was a special situation after germany already was eliminated in such a shocking way the game before and dirk basically announced his retirement from the national team. so, it won't be 50 for australia, but i'm expecting about 30. 20 should be considered a huge success. but we'll see, i guess.
Look at the scoreboard If there are no upsets in the quarter finals: 5th Australia . . . 8th China . 10th Germany
LOL - that's the ONLY way the US can score points? Wow I had no idea that LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Dwayne Wade, Kobe Bryant, Chris Paul, Derron Williams etc etc etc are completely incapable of scoring from anywhere outside of five feet from the basket. You just solved a lot of problems for NBA coaches - once the league catches on to this secret I predict a dynamic power shift.
pack the lanes, make USA shoot. if they hit, blowout. if they miss (and australia plays well), closer, but USA still wins in the teens. good luck have fun.
we will give you a mulligan on this bet if it happens. I think the US is looking for blood. I don't think they want anyone in the world to believe they can compete with American basketball. I would love to see a great game but I just don't think it is possible with the level of focus the Americans have now.
They are getting better every single game. Pool play was practice and now they they are shooting well again its basically over. I don't think the other team matters very much. Its all about how well they play together. I predict the final games will have a much higher margin of victory than the pool play did.
Offcourse they are o incapable fo scoring other ways douce. However they have showed the have trouble playing against the zone defense. You cannot stop team USA from scoring every way, but the best way is to focus on fastbreak point. TEAM USA if you pay attention allways look to score in the fastbreak. Why? They know they have trouble against a good 2/3 zone defense. Oh and in the nBA you cannot have a 2/3 zone becasue of the 3 second rule. Maybe you should pay attention to FIBA rules a bit more. I will post more latter on the game. Australia needs to take advantage of the first 5 minutes with Kidd at the point. Start with Mills instead of Bruton.
Are you deliberately making those spelling and grammatical errors? Let's just say they look awfully convenient and the tone of your posts sounds rather familiar.....
Amazing. Even after beating down 2 of the best teams in FIBA and people are still doubting Team USA. How many blowouts will it take for folks to understand that the USA is back on top of the basketball world?
Nice German patiotrism - but fail. Australia WON the 2003 junior youth world championships. Yes they sucked at the adult stuff in 2002 - but the squad they have for this olympics isn't anything like that team. The Chinese may have made the quarter finals in 2004 - but they still lose most games they play against Australia. The Australian squad for that Olympics wasn't the greatest... There's little doubt that the Lithuania, Argentina, Croatia, Russia, Australia, Iran pool was the stronger pool at these olympics. Australia would have finished at worst 4th in the other pool, but beating Greece/ Spain is certainly possible for them. They have no chance against Team USA and will lose by 20 - but at least then they can beat the Chinese to prove how wrong you are...
11 was considered a huge success right before the Olympics. For some reason we (aussies) think that because Bogut didn't play in that game, we're entitled to beat team USA this time round. I'll be watching the game and cheering - but we'll be losing by 20-30....
we better kick their a$$. hard. I want a 40 pt win at least. Im tired of hearing this upset talk. "shut them up. hard."
When is the game starting on the west coast? I can't seem to find the info anywhere and it's making my head explode.
The TAB (Betting agency owned by Aussie Govt) has USA -30.5 at $1.85. Even they don't think the Boomers can minimise the damage by losing by less than 30pts.
