Post-Game Recap: Canada vs. United States, December 6, 2010
The Canadian U21 team ran into a brick wall tonight, and lost 82-70 against the United States. The U.S. has a good team this season, and we would have needed a lot of luck to beat them. Unfortunately, things went about as expected, and while we kept things close, we were unable to pull out a crucial win.
The game started out with some hope, as we raced out to a 14-6 lead. The confused U.S. players quickly regrouped, though, and proceeded to beat us 76-56 after that. The U.S. won every quarter, and had a 1 point lead after 12 minutes, a 3 point lead at half time, an 8 point lead after 36 minutes, and a 12 point lead when the game ended.
Looking at the details of the game, our best player tonight was probably Glenn Richards. He managed to put up 23 points (on 15 shots) while grabbing 16 rebounds. I think that earns him a random player of the game nod from me. Finally, someone other than Jaiswal or Clear wins the award. I knew it would happen eventually. :P The United States didn't have a single standout player, but got solid contributions from all over the court, and their superior team balance and depth was probably the main reason they won. They had 36 points off the bench, for example, while we just had 9, although their backups did play a lot more minutes than ours (due to the U.S. using fairly unusual substitution tactics).
With this loss, and an expected loss next week to Argentina, that puts us out of contention for making world's directly. We still are in good shape to fight for third in our group, though, if we want to, which would give us a spot in the second chance qualifiers early next season.
Last edited by The Mogul at 12/6/2010 11:20:42 PM