U.S. men’s basketball wins final tune-up
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Updated at 11:10 a.m. with this link to Mark Heisler’s Los Angeles Times story.
The men’s U.S. Olympic basketball team beat Australia 87-76 on Tuesday night in Shanghai. The win was the fifth in a row for the squad that now has completed its pre-Beijing Games tour.
The U.S. had to rely on its defense because the team went 3-for-18 from beyond the three-point line and 20-for-33 from the foul line.
USA and Duke University head coach Mike Krzyzewski tells USA Basketball after the game:
Australia played us very well. We were not shooting well and their defense took away a lot of driving areas. They got really hot [shooting] in the second half to put a lot of game pressure on our guys and I thought our guys handled it well on a night where from the free-throw line or from the three-point things were not easy for us. We’re still in the process of getting prepared [for the Olympics]. We’ve played four games in six days and we gave them off yesterday just because were trying to pace ourselves. Probably that lack of practice had a little bit of an impact on our performance. I didn’t think we were as sharp as we have been, and the three days that we can have practice in Beijing have to be three good practice days in order to get us going. We’ve been playing outstanding basketball and tonight I didn’t think we played very well, or not up to what we can play.
Dwyane Wade scored 22 points and LeBron James added 16 points. Patrick Mills and Chris Anstey each added 13 points for Australia. Australia rested Andrew Bogut, the No. 1 pick in the 2005 NBA draft, who is nursing a sore right ankle.
The U.S. team flies to Beijing on Wednesday.
-- Greg Johnson