After just being together for 24 hours the US Olympic women’s basketball team were successful in settling quickly. They had practiced together for hardly two and a half hours before the exhibition game against China. The game was scheduled in the middle of the three day training camp for the American team.
The Chinese team is in the same pool as the American team in the London Olympics2012. There, both the teams will again face each other in July. In the 2008 Beijing Olympics both the teams had played each other and US had routed China 108-63. While China finished in the fourth place, US had claimed the Gold in the Beijing Olympics games.
In the exhibition game the Chinese team had hung with their opponents for the first fifteen minutes. Later the US team used their depth and pulled away. In the early second quarter they led 29-23, later the US team went on a 21-6 run to take complete control of the game.
The American led 52-33 at the half and went on to win the game. While China played without its two of the top players Chen Nan and Miao Lijie, in the US team Tina Charles absence was felt as she is recovering from a groin injury.
One of the star attractions in the American camp was Swin Cash, former Seattle Storm player. She had led the Storm to a WNBA title in 2010. The audience had warmly greeted her with a huge round of applause in the pregame introductions.
Among the audience were Cash’s former Seattle coach Brain Agler, three times Olympics gold medalist and current Storm player Katie Smith, WNBA president Laurel Richie.
The American team will spend three days in Washington D.C. then head to Manchester, England for other exhibition games. They would then participate in a tournament in Istanbul just before the start of the London Olympic Games that will begin on 27th July. The American team has the opportunity to set up a record for the maximum number of consecutive wins in Olympics if they manage to bag the gold medal in London. This will be the fifth straight gold medal. The United States have won 33 straight Olympics contest.
This is the first time the US Olympic team has returned to Seattle to train since 1995 when they had played an exhibition game against the University of Washington.
