Opals cruise into gold medal match
Posted
Updated
Opals player Suzy Batkovic drives past China's Liu Dan (Getty Images: Phil Walter)
Australia's women's basketball team will take on the United States for the gold medal after crushing China 90-56 in one of the most lop-sided semi-finals in Olympic history.
After a tight first term, the Opals blew the game open in the second quarter, outscoring the host nation 21-7 to take a 16-point lead into half-time.
Led by Belinda Snell (16 points), the Australians took the boisterous home crowd out of the equation in the second half, cruising to victory in the final term by outscoring China 33-17.
The Opals will tackle the United States in the final on Saturday night, hoping to claim Australia's first ever Olympic gold medal in basketball.
The United States beat Russia 67-52 in the other semi-final.
Australia's win was all the more impressive given guard Penny Taylor missed the game with an ankle injury.
Taylor says her ankle will be fine and she will play in the final.
"Obviously it will be strapped up to the max and it will be stable and it will be fine and I won't be thinking about it," she said.
She said the Opals are desperate to reverse the result from Athens, where the US won the gold medal match by 11 points.
"It's one game. It's one game and we go out and give it 100 per cent as I know everyone will and we get the gold medal we've always dreamed of," she said.
"We've just got to do everything we talked about all along.
"I don't know how many times our girls dived on the floor tonight after a ball, we got every rebound that was there up for grabs and I just think those things are going to get us across the line."
The Opals used a balanced attack to take a 16-point lead in the second period and never looked back as the shorter Chinese failed to find a way to shoot over the Aussie defence.
Cheered on by a large contingent of fans, the Aussies were led by Snell and Kristi Harrower (14 points), while captain Lauren Jackson chipped in with 11 and Laura Summerton and Suzy Batkovic added 10 each.
China was led by guard Bian Lan with 20 points, while point guard Miao Lijie added 10.
The hosts came into the game looking to run and use their quickness to stop the Opals' attack and for the first part of the game the tempo was fast, with both teams getting quickly up and down the court.
With a frenetic pace China was able to keep Australia in check until midway through the second period when the Opals exploded for a series of easy buckets to extend a 22-16 lead to 34-18 at the half.
Forward Summerton did most of the damage, scoring six points during the run, while her front court mate Batkovic had four.
The loss was bittersweet for China's Australian coach Tom Maher, who was praised by the the China Basketball Association this week for taking his team through the preliminaries with only one loss and beating Belarus 77-62 in the quarter-finals.
-ABC/AFP
