PAN AM GAMES : Basketball Gold Again Eludes U.S.

Talk about homecourt advantages.

The fans couldn’t have been louder, the emotions couldn’t have run higher and the result--for the host country--couldn’t have been better at the Pan American Games.

At the same Multi-Sports Stadium where it outlasted the United States in the volleyball gold-medal game a week earlier, Argentina used a brilliant first half and the power of a raucous crowd to defeat the United States, 90-86, for the basketball gold Saturday night.

“The crowd was maniacal,” U.S. Coach Mike Thibault said. “I came to the volleyball final and I knew it would be the same thing.”

Said U.S. forward Erik Martin: “I played in front of hostile crowds in college (Cincinnati), but not one that sang the entire game.”

The loss marked the third Pan Am Games in a row in which the United States has failed to win the basketball gold. The last two times, it was a college all-star team that failed. This time, it was a collection of minor leaguers from the Continental Basketball Association.

“The people outside (in the United States) aren’t going to understand what we went through here,” Thibault said. “We didn’t get any breaks, but we didn’t quit. It’s the nature of the players we brought here.”

Argentina scored exactly half as many points--30--in the second half as it did in the first. But it was enough, sending the players into a court-circling dance at the end as they were serenaded by the delirious crowd.

The U.S. team lost its first two games, including 68-67 to Argentina, then won four straight before settling for the silver medal. That continued a streak in which the United States hasn’t won the Pan Am Games since 1983, losing to Puerto Rico in 1991 and Brazil in 1987.

The loss dropped the U.S. record in the Pan Am Games to 73-7 since 1951.

Brazil won the bronze, defeating Uruguay, 98-85.

Elsewhere, the Cuban-U.S. rivalry for track supremacy went down to the wire on the final day of competition, Cuba winning four gold medals and two silvers and the Americans taking three golds and five silvers.

The United States picked up four golds, three silvers and a bronze in water skiing, and the women’s softball team stretched its unprecedented international winning streak to 105 games by beating Puerto Rico, 4-0, for the gold medal. Another gold came in water polo, when the Americans blitzed Brazil, 16-5.

World record holder Javier Sotomayor, one of the celebrities of these games, took the gold in the high jump at 7-10 1/2.