Mark Maloney on Kentucky sports

            BEIJING – The United States women’s basketball team moved on to the gold-medal game of the Beijing Olympics by upending Russia 67-52 Thursday night (morning U.S.) at Wukesong Olympic Basketball Gymnasium.

            World champion Australia dispatched China to gain Saturday’s finals. China and Russia will play for bronze.

             Team USA will seek a fourth consecutive Olympic gold. The Americans have won 32 consecutive games in Olympic play, including seven in Beijing.

             Russia gave the U.S. its toughest test of the tournament, but South Dakota native Becky Hammon was of little factor in opposing her native country.

             Hammon, who plays professional ball for CSKA Moscow, entered the game as Russia’s leading scorer, averaging 13.2 points a game. Thursday, Hammon was held scoreless until sinking a free throw with 9:30 left. She added a driving jumper to finish with three points in 24 minutes of action.

“It was a very physical game,” she said. “I thought we played well for about three quarters. Eventually their depth and their size just overpowers you. They have a very great team and we had to play perfectly, and we didn’t make some shots. It makes life difficult when you don’t hit shots.”

A six-point run to open the second half gave Russia a 38-33 lead.

Team USA finished the quarter with a 15-2 flurry and scored the first two points of the fourth quarter to grab a 50-40 lead. The Russians never came closer than nine points after that.

“We had to get lucky,” Hammon said. “We had to have the ball bounce our way and we had to make some shots, and things didn’t go our way. But you have to give credit to them.”

            Tina Thompson led the 17-2 run by scoring four points. Diana Taurasi, Sylvia Fowles and Katie Smith scored three each. Seimone Augustus and Lisa Leslie added two apiece.

Taurasi led U.S. scoring with 21 points, drilling five of eight three-pointers, and added nine rebounds. Thompson scored 15 points. Fowles added eight, plus a game-leading 10 rebounds.

Russia got 14 points from 6-foot-8 Maria Stepanova.

This entry was posted on August 21, 2008 at 12:20 pm and is filed under Basketball, Olympics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.