Turkey over Korea.

1/4
France v Japan
Australia v tough call between Belgium and Latvia
Spain vs Canada
USA vs Turkey

1/2
France vs Australia
Spain vs USA

Tough call between France and Australia.

Final
USA vs France or Australia.

Whoever loses out of France and Australia comes 4th to Spain. No medal.

Worst than 6th place and the coaching staff should get the sack.

We know the backcourt will be very different in 2 years time and we should be even better.

Wow, we look like crap....
Same poor ball movement with each opals team.

It's the same stuff, over and over again.
Give it to Cambage, and on occasion throw the 3 ball up.

Move the dam ball!

that was very ordinary by the opals. that smith needs to take her ego down a notch or two.

Smith?
Think you mean someone else.

The USA only beat Senegal by 20 and that margin took at least until the 3rd qtr to achieve. Afican teams always look like they overperform because they play a very physical and scrambling defence.

We have yet to play a game with a full squad. I think we'll be fine

Yeah,
It sucks that no one is covering it. Poor form.

Same goes for socceroos youth WC qualification yesterday. No media coverage at all.

"Smith?
Think you mean someone else."

no I meant Smith

what did smith do?

I don't think anyone underestimated Nigeria. We were just terrible...
We will get better as a team, but our backcourt is just awful.

Whitcomb showed more than the other guards and should start with ebzery.

Will be interesting with the next opals gathering after the WC.
Hopefully some new pgs and Wallace and tolo to come back from injury.

People are putting a lot of faith in Wallace based on being a very good college player. Getting it done there and stepping straight into a PG role at Opals level is a big call. Might want to wait and see what she can do in the WNBL first

Backcourt...

Conti, Mangakahia PG
Wallace CG
Whitcomb, Ebzery SG

Madgen cut. Mitchell done

If Clydesdale or Lavey can somehow miraculously improve offensively, then it could be them. Hasn't happened yet.


I've got more faith in our youth than most.


Tolo also in for bunton.
George's lack of mobility may see her also get cut.
Blicavs would need to have a stellar season to get a sf spot over Allen Talbot, ohea.

Cayla George is below average, barely puts in any effort, Smith and Magbegor need a lot of her minutes later on in the tournament.

So much faith that you're sticking with 'anonymous' as your name

takes time for people to jump on board it seems...

What a game between Japan and Belgium.

Looks like we will play Belgium in the 1/4s. Going to be a very tought contest.

Yeah, George too slow for this level and doesn't get enough time to shoot it from the perimeter.

Aokuso will have her number in 2 years time.

Cabbage will hit the wall when she comes up against another quality big. There is no second option in the offence , going to be a short tournament which is going to raise a lot of questions about the future direction of program especially in the guards.

how much quicker was the tempo when Cambage wasn't on the floor and when it was Ezi and smith in the post.

Cambage is 27y.o currently. I'm not sure she will go beyond the Olympics by choice.
I personally think she'll retire at 29 and not go through another WC(31y.o) or Olympic cycle(33y.o). Without her, we are in big trouble. We have to complete change our game plan and a lot of the roster.

Seebohm is the better 'team' orientated coach imo. He will not just pick names off a list. He would be my choice of coach after the Olympics.

Avg pts per minutes played. Pretty shocking...

Cambage 29 in 23 mins
Bunton 3 in 9 mins
George 3 in 20 mins
Magbegor 11 in 15 mins
Smith 8 in 14 mins
Allen 7 in 20 mins
Talbot 4 in 23 mins
Ohea 0 in 0 mins
Madgen 5 in 19 mins
Whitcomb 12 in 21 mins
Ebzery 3 in 21 mins
Lavey 0 in 15 mins


Starting 5 without Cambage is contributing 17 points in 84 minutes of gametime.
(1 point every 5 minutes)

so many passive personalities on the team. Hopefully some of them can step up to the fight.

How many of the players make other players around them better.

The points guards - omg. flat out getting up the court, let alone creating plays.

When Tess Madgen is running the point it is pretty obvious there are serious issues.

Nigeria beating Turkey is handy as it means the Opals have about 12 points up their sleeves against Turkey.

It is probably one of the most open world cup/championships ever.

I can't believe people are complaining about a system that is working. They've won both games.

Nigeria also beat Turkey the last team in our Pool. Did people complain when MJ took all the shots? When Wilt did?

The system is designed to work with the best options they have to score. To date no one can stop Cambage and probably the only one who can is Cambage. But while its successful why not go to it, as her WNBL and WNBA team have done before the Opals.

Ridiculous the level of whinging going on here.

Actually why give away Plan B to those teams scouting? None of us know what Plan B or C are, they would be running through them behind closed doors.

I think doing what they're doing now is exactly what they should be.

we have played very poorly in 2 winning games. If we don't improve by the 1/4s, we will lose. Simple...

Belgium most likely and they look much more cohesive than us. More tenacity on offense and defense and if we don't do well in the backcourt, were likely to get beaten.

This is the best side bar Madgen and Lavey we could have put together with the injuries we had.

Even with this team, anything less than 6th is a failure.
We know that USA, Spain, France, Canada and Japan are good teams. We shouldn't be losing to any other team with the depth that we have.

Talbot and George need to be swapped out for Whitcomb and 1 of smith or magbegor.

"Cabbage will hit the wall when she comes up against another quality big. "

"^agree Cambage doesn't cope with pressure , let alone pressure from a half decent opponent"


^^ yes agree also. Cambage was top scorer in the best league in the world but she can't play basketball for shit especially against good opponents.

Got to worry about griffins continuous injuries.
If you take her, you push out a much needed guard.

I'd prefer to look to the future. I'm happy with smith and magbegors development.
I'm also hoping george is on the way out.
Watching aokuso in the qbl for Logan, She looks to be apart of the opals sooner rather than later ahead of others who are undersized.
Can play both pf and c which makes her more versatile than the other youth prospects like Garbin or a.froling.

Her qbl highlights are pretty impressive and she is excelling in preseason testing for the Fire. Has much more mobility, athleticism and defensive capability than George.
Will be interesting to see how she goes this season with alot more minutes.


https://www.hudl.com/video/3/7412323/5b6494efbd6aae0fa4916fd3

All I can say is no wonder Netball gets more coverage than Basketball. Everything I read about netball is positive. When they are at any competition no matter the result they pump their teams up. All I have read here is crtiticsm and negativity about a team that has just one two games at a World Cup. Why would would I jump on board and throw my support behind basketball after reading this. If you want the sport to grow and you younger players aspire to play why not support our national teams rather than being negative. Glass half full sometimes is better than glass half empty

Go to the netball forums and you'll see just as much criticism about tactics and roster choices.

it happens with any team at the highest level.

It's easy to be positive in the netball sphere when you are always champions or second as there is no depth in competition. Deluded fools being a big fish in the shallowest of ponds.

Basketball participation in this country is growing rapidly while netball is plateauing.

In a short amount of time netball will struggle against the other codes like aflw, nplw and w league.

Nrlw..

With fox footy, fox league, fox cricket..

It is only a matter of time before they have fox hoops. Every nbl, wnbl game live. Every international, perhaps some nba, wnba and euroleague.

College ncaa too.

Doubt it. Those specific channels are only for local sports. They are xenophobic to world games like football and basketball.

On that note with whole channels being wasted now on sports with not enough content how much of a giant useless turd are the Fox Sports channels in the sports package. Thankfully there are multiple ESPN and beIN channels.

Also their 4K launch is just cricket (yawn) and Bathurst. lmao, more wastage.

trouble with our wings at the moment is that they can't dribble drive.
Taylor and jarry were known for getting to the cup or breaking down defenses.
Defense has gotten a lot better in the women's game in the last 4 years though. Not as many open lanes.
Allen is primarily a 3 point shooter and Talbot a defensive specialist, hustler.
Don't really have any Taylor type wings coming through the ranks unfortunately.

We have Allen, Talbot and Blicavs and maybe on occasion kunek for the next few years yet.

Horvat in 4 or so years looks the closest wing to penny.

2 pgs on the floor is were it's headed.

Seebohm had 2 of Heal, Scanlon, Palmer, Amoore on all the time.

Size is the problem when you have to switch on defense. That's why big guards like Talbot and Allen come in handy at 6'2. The downside to that is that the ball doesn't move freely on offense. Tempo usually slowed too because they aren't as quick in transition.

It sure is compared to posts where people purely press send to promote clicks to their website.

George is such a liability. Really need to go with Alanna or Ezi.

wow one of the best quarters the Opals have ever played.

That is ever.........

youtube fiba channel if you have a proxy

You can watch live on fox sports but you have to pay subscription

Quite a few "upsets", Hoopie's predictions were way off with just 3 of 16 teams finishing in the predicted positions (AUS, USA and PUR). Certainly raises the question of possible tanking. Spain went into their game with a +15 advantage over Belgium (+13 from win over Japan V -2 for Belgium). That meant Japan was -11 (and staying there) and an 8 point Belgium win would see Belgium finish first and Spain second meaning a quarter final against winner of France V Canada and a semi against us and not USA which is now Belgium's possible fate. Low and behold Spain lose by 9 points! Then France completely collapse in the second half against Canada (perhaps now realising the winner will now have Spain as a QF opponent as the Spain game started 30 minutes prior). Did they think they are better off playing Belgium in QF and then dealing with USA in a semi? I wonder how difficult it would be to draw the crossovers out of a hat after completion of group games? Would put an end to the practice of tanking to get the more favourable matchup one would think.

Maybe if they had Lemanis coaching who had NFI how to tank. #n00b

Maybe some sort of seeding but then you could argue the whole issue arose because the crossovers were not "seeded" with USA (1) drawn to meet Spain (2) in a semi had Spain topped their group. As for not knowing where to book well that is the case anyway as I am sure a few Spanish fans have tickets for C1 V A2/B3 (although no doubt there a few savvy ones who would have realised what their team would do). Relying on world rankings may not be the best to do seeding anyway, Belgium are ranked 28, 6 places below Puerto Rico, but spanked them by 50 and ran Japan (13) to OT. Let teams earn their "seeding" by performing in the group stage and let the cards fall as they may in terms of 1-4 and so on. Do a draw 15 minutes after last group game. Currently there must be spectators booking for the "wrong" game with teams tanking and I am sure in today's digital world there must be some way of allowing trading/swapping of tickets, especially if you register as a fan of a particular team.

Canary Islands population 2 million,
Tenerife 900,000.
Norfolk Island 1750.
South Australia population 1.6 million.

I watched the games. Didn't see any tanking.

Belgium earnt the win and I'm glad they didn't finish 3rd in the group because we would have lost in the 1/4s.
Japan are a much easier opponent to beat without a legit post player. We've got to defend the perimeter well though.
China match us in size but haven't looked that good except for one game.


1/4s look like

Spain vs Canada (Canada)
Japan vs Australia (Australia)

Belgium vs France (Belgium)
USA vs Nigeria (USA)


Semis imo will be
Canada vs Australia
USA vs Belgium

Wow Aus nice draw.

Wow just wow at the Canary Islands comment. Wow.

Canada will be number 2 in the next few years. Too much young talent coming through.

They were like 18 points down in the final qtr.
Tank it to 9 points? To make it seem close?
Not so sure...

If brondello plays George at pf against Japan...

... she will dominate with her strength and ferocity and array of post moves!

Or get beaten time and time again from her lack of mobility.

Not having tokashiki really hurt Japan.

China vs australia 1/4s...

Smacked em in pre tournament.

Get past China, play solid vs Canada and Cambage to have the fame of her life vs. USA? The problem is you can't rely on her but what if just one time?

game*

Pissed that they didn't swap the tipoff times of the USA game and the Opals game. It wold have made them much friendlier for audiences in Oz, China and USA and no worse for Nigeria fans. Weak sauce. Very weak sauce.

Would love to see Ebzery be more of a threat off the pnr

Looks like were making the semis.

Hate to say this this but I prefer Lavey handling th ball over Madgen.

Asia is hopeless at basketball.

Cam-biege

Australia is from the Asian region...

No, Oceania.

In basketball, it's from both.

Spain move the ball so well.
I wonder if Talbot is available.

They also had another team conveniently dispose of the USA for them in the other semi. Belgium looked pretty potent in that first half.
#alsojustsaying

"Spain move the ball so well.
I wonder if Talbot is available."

Yes it was great to see Jenna back in action but would be really rotten luck if Talbot was unable to continue. Fingers crossed!!!

Need talbots defense, that's for sure. Allen has been better than expected on both ends.
Ebzery, Madgen havent been great on D. Can do much better and Lavey should be backup over Madgen if she can't contribute offensively.

fimals995,

Madgen is not Breaking down the defense either.

It's unfortunate that all our young guards are getting taught this way.
Lavey, Clydesdale, Conti all with serious pace have all gone away from what they use to be good at before entering the wnbl. Coaches are really killing us.
The only one that promotes penetration is Seebohm and he's not a current wnbl coach.

''Which idiot takes an injured player into a World Championship.''

in fairness having an OHea who cant play the prelim games is still probably more valuable than anyone else who they could have brought in instead

this squad is better than it would have been with Mitchell and Mansfield imo.
Think we had better options for Lavey and Madgen though.

Scherf is.4th in line centre option.

Cambage, Tolo, Bunton, Scherf...

Credit where it is due to Coach Brondello. I wasn't sure about her but I think she is the real deal. She has the players on the same page far better than any other recent Opals coach and she is also very knowledgeable about our international opponents.

Certainly a way better choice than Joyce.
Was never a fan of Stirling, maher or Graf either.
Hoping Seebohm gets the gig after the Olympics if brondello chooses not to continue.

Omg please get Madgen off.

Not one coach giving Liz a talking too trying to settle her bs.

liz melt down lets spain back into the game, gets the crowd involved and the opals falling apart

crazy coaching by sandy and co.

Madgen should not be getting minutes. Should not be on the team.
Only her familiarity with sandy during her time time with Phoenix hasn't gotten her a roster spot.

lavey should be backing up KRE not Madgen.

could you imagine Liz playing in the Euroleague and stirring up the home crowds.

Her antics are beyond stupidity but probably not too many people surprised.

Smith showing her lack of exp too.

Got to give credit to Talbot and Allen. Putting in a lot of work.

Guard situation and ca,badge hanging out on the perimeter is killing us.

team sorely missing a penetrate and create type player to break down Spain's defence now. Well, as someone said above, Australia don't produce them

We do actually, but brondello is the coach. She doesn't look at college players.
Wallaces injury is a huge loss.

I think this game shows that sandy is not the coach we were all hoping for.

Laughable defense. At the end of the third.

pity Batkovic isn't on the team. could have done with another solid post option as well as someone who could tell someone else it is not all about her.

Tech foul. Liz wtf

Post players bringing the ball up...

Sandy please give the Olympic job to someone else and get rid of chambers, Goriss and Lucas.

Cmon fox sports...

Heart attack anyone?

The curse of the last qtr for Spain.

That win must really irritate a lot of posters on this thread, who wish the national team would fail so they have more ammunition to post about.

jenna ohea was amazing in that last quarter.

It's not all black and white.
Winning doesn't mean you can't make changes to improve the team.

Who thinks Lavey should of got Madgen s minutes?

Only person who would play Lavey in that game was Joyce. Our injuries in the guard spots haven't been helpful, but Sandy has pulled something special out of the group she has. So glad they get a medal after the Rio debacle

Opals with Katie-Rae on court 28 minutes +25
Opals with Tess Madgen on the court 12 minutes -19

Lavey has looked much more comfortable with the ball in hand than Madgen in every game so far.

press conference
http://www.fiba.basketball/womensbasketballworldcup/2018/videos/%F0%9F%94%B4-LIVE-Press-Conference-Spain-v-Australia-Semi-Final

Magden is not a point guard.. she was a 2 guard up until 4 years ago when she was asked to be a 1. WHY? I have no clue. I remember her first year at boomers when she switched to the 1 . They had Smart and Cole coming off the bench. It was tragic. Her scoring dropped off and their offense was just as bad. Happened this year too with O'hea. It wasn’t as bad because they had Liz.

After what Wilson did in seabl and hurst in the qbl. Couldn't even get a look in at pg...
And the rest of the 20 girl roster had no other pgs in it.

If not a veteran than give some quality youth pgs a shot. Just need to give them a chance.
Has to be at least 4-5 under 25y.o that are not even getting a chance to play against the current crop.

Without her, we probably don't make the top 8 though.
When she decides to leave the game, we are going to really struggle.
The next 2 in are Bunton and Scherf at that position. Tolo would have retired too.

I don't like Madgen at the point either, but seriously stop calling for the entire coaching staff's head everytime we have a bad patch on the court. You don't know any of the ins and outs of what they're doing, none of us do. They were nothing short of spectacular in the two games prior to this morning, now it's finals and finals get ugly. Also, stop making out like seebolm is the messiah, if you knew anyone who'd played under him at Aus level you'd know that's not the case. Current staff have got us back to the Gold medal game, let's support them

Ushiro, well said.

Best centre in the world for sure.
she won us the game with her skill and almost lost it for us with her attitude.

It's amazing that we've made the gold medal game and I'm proud of the girls for getting us this far, but I can also see that there are some roster choices and coaching decisions that need to be addressed before Tokyo.

Hoping they go all the way. Go Opals!!

Avg minutes..

Cambage 23
Talbot 23
Allen 23
Ebzery 22
George 21
Whitcomb 20
Madgen 17
Ohea 16
Smith 14
Magbegor 13
Lavey 13
Bunton 12

Cambage to show she is truly elite by leading us to gold and cutting by the immaturity. But I fear she is too dumb to realise how big this is now...

cutting out*

She was told 5 times to stop taunting the crowd. Ended up getting the tech.

What got me was that the coaches just let her act like that.
Watch the replay when she goes to the bench during that heated period.
Starts to yell profanitys at the ref while they go past while chambers, Goriss and Lucas just sit there.

In that situation, an assistant coach or another team leader should stand right in front of her to settle them or distract her.

Weak coaching, pathetic really.

I'm not sure any of the previous 5 opals coaches would have said anything to her except for maybe maher.

The crowd taunting thing is ridiculous. There is worse in the NBL. The only reason it's a FIBA rule is that some (European particularly) countries/cities can't control their crowds during Euro league/cup and Euro basket matches. Think about the sheds that some Euro teams have over their benches.

3 very timid assistant coaches. Need at least one who can give them a stern talking too.

Even more glad that we beat Spain after watching Palau's interview where she referred to the wnbl as a low league, and not an elite competition. Hmm, salty much that you didn't perform down here sista?

it is fine that liz plays on emotion, however the opposition play on emotion too. so what she did was inspire the home team the home crowd. Then in the process she helped some of her team mates get rattled, they barely made a shot after her antics. Does she make her team mates better when she starts to stir things up?

yes she is the best player in the world right now. much fitter than she was before and it really shows.

However because of her history everyone knows that the only way to stop her is to get her head out of the game, get her to foul out by whatever means. So it means that she is going to get hit, pushed, cheap shots taken against her, defenders flopping.

It was certainly a game for the history books.

Liz playing on emotion got her ejected from the comm games gold medal game.

The opals team dancing around on the other teams home court after the game wasn't the best look either. Which the commentators mentioned.

you stay classy Australia

The Opals mantra for at least 20 years was poise, play with poise.

Hopefully more history created tomorrow.

Would you release bunton from the squad when tolo is healthy or keep both and take out one of george, smith or Magbegor?

Would a male player get teched up for what Liz did, or applauded for their passion? The crowd was loving having a villain, and so was she.

It was a little like the phillipino team taking selfies in the men's match.
We have a side with great skill but also a lot of girls with huge egos and immaturity.
Snowball effect too. Seems to be contagious.

a male player would have got Teched and possible hit with a cheap shot by a home team player (or in the case of a certain country security guards)

Liz was also dropping plenty of swear words in there too directed at the crowd.

It really is a love/hate relationship with Liz.

I think the team will be even better in Tokyo if we qualify.
You add tolo as backup centre, Wallace at the guard, another pg. 2 very high calibre athletes who are both great role models.

Hear hear Really!

Couldn't even rely on the assistants to coach, had to have Olaf do it in the qualifiers.
Supposably one of the best coaches in the world has made Russia (a very talented team) almost non existent.

Palau is right about the wnbl, it is a few steps below the euroleague.
Not just about the play but also how's its run.

On the other side. Staley is no auriemma.

USA have not looked that great under her so far, some unusual roster choices also and a the of lack of effort is evident.

Nicholson is not an international level pg. shes just another 6'0 sg/sf on the fringe of the opals squad who will have to better than Allen, Talbot, ohea and Blicavs to get a shot.

Whitcomb will retain her position in Tokyo which means Mitchell and Griffin will miss out.

WC (Points/Rebounds/Assists)

Starting 5
5'10 Ebzery-PG (4.2/1.4/3.2)
6'2 Talbot-SG (5.2/3/4.8)
6'2 Allen-SF (10.2/4.8/2.6)
6'4 George-PF (6.2/4.8/3.2)
6'8 Cambage-C (27.2/9.8/1)

2nd unit
5'11 Madgen-PG (3/2/2.2)
5'10 Whitcomb-SG (9/3.4/2.2)
6'1 Ohea-SF (3.5/2/1.5)
6'4 Smith-PF (5.6/2.8/0.6)
6'5 Bunton-C (3.6/4.2/0.2)

3rd string
5'8 Lavey-PG (1.3/1.8/2.8)
6'4 Magbegor-PF (8/3.8/0.5)


The others certainly need to contribute more on the offensive end now and into the future.

They lack 2 penetrating guards.
Wallace will come in for one of Lavey or Madgen. Another yet to be determined guard will step up. Mitchell will be done at 35 just like hurst was not wanted at 35y.o


Wallace
Ebzery
Whitcomb
Ohea
Talbot
Allen
Blicavs
Smith
Magbegor
George
Tolo
Cambage

Maybe 1 forward will be replaced with a guard.