Miami Vacation Offers Incentive for U.S. Team

No doubt motivated by the chance that a victory Tuesday would earn them two days of R&R; in Miami, the U.S. men’s basketball team remained unbeaten in the Pan American Games with an 87-81 victory over a capable and equally motivated team from Argentina.

U.S. Coach Gene Keady told his players that they might be able to spend their days off before the next game Friday night against the Bahamas in the relative luxury of a Miami hotel if they won their first three games here.

Mission accomplished, the players learned two hours after Tuesday’s game that the brief sojourn would become a reality.

Keady told reporters that USA Basketball, the national governing body for amateur basketball, had arranged to use the Miami Heat’s practice site in time for the team to board a charter flight from Havana Tuesday night.

“We don’t want to make an issue of it,” he said, aware that the Cuban hosts might be offended if they interpret the U.S. team’s departure as a comment on the accommodations that have been provided for athletes during the Pan American Games.

“We’re happy with the living quarters,” Keady said. “The fans have been great. If we leave, it has nothing to do with the Pan American Games. It has to do with us wanting to practice in private.”

It should be noted that Keady also praised the officiating here, so his credibility should not be taken for granted.

Actually, it was the Argentines who were more visibly aggravated by the inconsistency of the calls made Tuesday by Tomas Perez of Panama and Carlos Cardena of Mexico.

Argentina, which almost upset the United States in last year’s World Championships at home in Buenos Aires, was competitive until the end in this game as well, leading twice in the second half and trailing by only two with 1:30 remaining.

That is when guard Anthony Bennett of Wisconsin Green Bay beat an aggressive Argentine defense with a three-point shot as the 30-second clock ran out.

The score remained at 83-78 until there were 20 seconds remaining, when Argentina’s massive, lumbering center, Orlando Tourn, was called for fouling Southern Mississippi’s Clarence Weatherspoon.

Like a charging bull of the Pampas, Tourn took three menacing steps toward Perez, the referee who had blown the whistle on him. After Tourn was restrained by his teammates, he threw the ball at Perez, who called a two-shot technical foul. Four converted free throws later, the United States had a nine-point lead and the game in hand.

Since opening the tournament Saturday, the team of U.S. collegians has won two games that could have gone the other way and beaten one team, Venezuela, by 25 after leading by only six at halftime. The United States has been pulled out of a tight situation more than once by Ohio State’s Jim Jackson, who made seven of eight shots from the field Tuesday and scored 17 points. In three games, he has made 26 of 34 shots (76.5%).

“Anybody who tells you that these teams can’t beat us is lying,” said U.S. reserve center Mike Peplowski of Michigan State.

“These guys are professionals, they’re older than us, and they’ve been playing together for years. We’ve got a ton of talent on our team, but it’s still difficult to know what our teammates are going to do in a certain situation. We’ve been together for only three weeks.”

Unschooled in international diplomacy, and failing to follow Keady’s lead, Peplowski said that the young U.S. team has had to overcome other hardships.

“When we say that the living conditions here aren’t bad, we mean that they’re not as bad as we expected,” he said. “When we say the food isn’t bad, we mean it’s not as bad as we expected. When you get your Montezuma’s Revenge wake-up call at 4 o’clock in the morning, it’s not fun.

“You get on a bus, drive through a tunnel, and you think you’re going to get asphyxiated with carbon monoxide. It’s very, very difficult here. A lot of people back home might be pointing fingers at U.S. athletes here, back-stabbing us for not winning more medals. But, speaking for the basketball team, there’s 17 of us down here, and if it’s 17 of us against the world, so be it.”