TOKYO, Japan (August 1, 2021) – Canada’s National Senior Women’s Team lost 76-66 against Spain Sunday morning. With this defeat, Canada ends the group stage of the Tokyo 2020 Women’s Olympic Basketball Competition on a 1-2 record. The team must now wait to see if they will advance to the quarter-finals.
The teams classified first and second from each group and the 2 best third teams from the group stage qualify for the final stage. There are still a variety of scenarios that may or may not determine Canada’s qualification.
“This is definitely not the outcome we were looking for and now all we have to do is wait,” said head coach Lisa Thomaidis. “We wanted to be the master of our destiny. We won two quarters today and unfortunately we did not manage to catch up. “
Canada were helped by 14 points from Kia Nurse, 11 points from Natalie Achonwa and 10 points from Laeticia Amihere in the loss. Astou Ndour was the best player on the Spanish side, with a double-double of 20 points and 11 rebounds and guard Cristina Ouvina added 15 points and seven assists.
Canada knew Sunday’s meeting was going to be tough. Spain, third in the World rankings, won the silver medal at the Rio Olympics in 2016. Although Canada has managed at times to defend very well to the point of forcing the Spanish stray balls and allowing the team to increase the pace in attack, the complicated departure of Canada early in the game was finally too hard to overcome after a start to the third quarter which also proved difficult.
“Our tough start in the first and third quarters probably made the difference in the game,” said Nurse. “We fought really well, we showed a lot of determination but unfortunately we have to wait now. “
Canada shot 38 percent in the game, compared to Spain’s 59 percent. The Canadians did not get the start they were hoping for as Spain led 9-3 to start the game. After Canada managed to close the gap by just two points, 11-9, with 4:41 remaining in the quarter, Spain finished 12-4 to lead by 10 points, 23-13, after the first 10 minutes.
“We talked about intensity from the start of the game,” Amihere said in a post-game interview. I think that’s what we missed a bit. We found the solution at the end, when we were starting to fall behind. I think we need this for 40 minutes. It’s the Olympics. It’s hard to have a sluggish start and win the game. ”
After a better second quarter due to Canada’s defense, Nurse’s second three-point basket dropped Canada to just 6 points, 40-34, at halftime. Canada’s defensive efforts in the first half prevented Spain from scoring any three-pointers, as Canada converted 3 of their five long attempts, including two from Nurse.
Things started to get tough in the third as Spain started the quarter 9-0, the biggest gap in the game. A three-point basket from Ouvina closed an 18-4 for Spain, increasing a lead by 20 to 4:39 of the end of the quarter. As Canada continued to try to close the gap, Amihere helped Canada offensively to get back 13 points behind their opponent before entering the final quarter.
“I think we lost a bit of our defensive intensity to start the third quarter, for some reason I don’t know,” said Thomaidis. “We can’t let Spain be comfortable and unfortunately that’s kind of what happened. We tried to stop the bleeding right away, we had good open shots, but we didn’t always know how to convert them into points. Sometimes these are things that can happen. “
Canada started the last quarter by ramping up the defensive intensity to the max. Even though the team was able to come back to six points, they failed to get any closer.
“I found that the team played very courageously to get back into the game, and we managed to close the gap which is ultimately reasonable,” said Thomaidis. “They took in some important baskets at that time allowing them to widen the gap. We are disappointed with this result. “
“We had high hopes and we still have them today,” said Thomaidis. “We are not finished. We will wait, hoping to move on to the next round, play the quarter-finals and continue to improve. “
