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Aussies have easier road to final Associated Press SYDNEY, Australia -- The Australian women's Olympic basketball team completed its first step toward a possible gold medal Sunday and it couldn't have been any better. Australia finished unbeaten in pool play with a 69-62 victory over France and will be Group A's top seed for Wednesday's quarterfinals. Australia will play Poland (3-2) in the quarterfinals, but it really didn't seem to matter right after the victory over France. With the 76-57 win over Poland on Sunday, the U.S. team finished unbeaten in Group B and now the host country can't face the United States until the gold medal game. "Our goal was to finish first," Australia coach Thomas Maher said. "It seems they got the seedings right. I don't put any credence in who's favored and who isn't. Play who you play. We'll still think about the gold medal, but we have to focus on the quarterfinal." The other quarterfinal matchups will have the United States, the defending gold medalist, against Slovakia, France against South Korea and Russia against Brazil. The U.S.-Slovakia and South Korea-France winners will meet in one semifinal on Friday and the Australia-Poland and Brazil-Russia winners will meet in the other. Australia (5-0), the 1996 bronze medal winner, did an outstanding defensive job against France (4-1) and was impressive on the boards, finishing with a 42-27 rebound advantage, including 18-9 on the offensive end. "We wanted to get on the offensive boards, and everybody did. It was great," said Australia center Lauren Jackson, who finished with 17 points and 12 rebounds. Forward Carla Boyd had nine points and nine rebounds and was the main player responsible for holding France's Catherine Melain to 10 points on 4-for-13 shooting. "We set the standard over the first five minutes," Boyd said. "Defensively, as a team, we're really strong and that makes a difference." France's Isabelle Fijalkowski had 24 points and seven rebounds, but she was the team's only constant on offense and often seemed alone in trying to hold Australia off the boards, especially on the offensive end. "We didn't do a very good on the boards. We just weren't up to it physically," she said. "We were blocking out, but it always seemed one of their girls was breezing in and that was it. We can't continue to do that." At least France, the reigning European champion, is continuing in its first Olympic appearance. "We've come from afar, miles and otherwise," France coach Alain Jardel said, referring to the fact that few picked his team as one of the medal contenders. Fijalkowski said she was disappointed with the loss, but then talked about her team still being alive with a chance at a medal. "Now we'll still try to move forward with lessons we have learned," she said. "This was our most important game. Now the next game is the most important game. We can still play much better. Canada 61, Brazil 60 Canada won, but lost. Canada (2-3) scored the final six points of the game, the last two on free throws by Cal Bouchard with 29 seconds to play, but it still was the odd team out of a three-way tiebreaker with Brazil and Slovakia. The top two teams of the three advanced on goal average (points for in games among the those teams divided by points allowed). Brazil finished with a 1.12 goal average, while Slovakia had .969 and Canada was .914. Canada will play Cuba for ninth place on Tuesday. Brazil used a 17-0 run to take a 48-34 lead with 11:59 to play. Canada chipped away and closed with the 6-0 run. Brazil's final chance at the win came on a turnaround jumper by Janeth Arcain with three seconds left, but it bounced off the rim. Stacey Dales had 16 points and 10 rebounds for Canada, while Arcain had 19 points for Brazil, the 1996 silver medal winners. Slovakia 68, Senegal 32 Zuzana Zirkova scored 18 points as Slovakia reached the quarterfinals in its first Olympic appearance. Zirkova had 12 points at halftime as Slovakia took a 27-12 lead. Slovakia scored the first 12 points of the second half and led by as much as 53-16 with about 12 minutes to play. Astou Ndiaye had 16 points and 10 rebounds for Senegal (0-5), which is also making its first Olympic appearance. Senegal, which lost its preliminary round games by an average of 36.8 points, will play New Zealand (0-5) for 11th place on Tuesday. Russia 92, New Zealand 54 Irina Rutkovskaya scored 18 points to lead Russia, which pulled away from the game's final tie with a 9-0 run that made it 25-19 with 5:27 left in the first half. Rutkovskaya scored the first six points of the run, all on free throws, and that ignited the offense as Russia went on to a 41-28 halftime lead. Russia entered the game shooting 50.9 percent from the field and it improved on that, going 33-for-61 (54.1 percent), including 8-for-17 from 3-point range with Rutkovskaya making all three of her attempts from beyond the arc. Julie Ofsoski had 11 points to lead New Zealand, which was outscored by an average of 34 points in the preliminary round of its first Olympic appearance. South Korea 69, Cuba 56 Chun Joo-weon's triple-double -- 10 points, 10 rebounds and 11 assists -- helped South Korea clinch the berth in the quarterfinals. South Korea, which led 34-28 at halftime despite going just 2-for-10 from 3-point range, found its shooting touch in the second half, making five of 11 3-point attempts while using the shot clock to its advantage against a bigger and more physical opponent. Yang Jung-ok, who had 17 points, made four of her first five 3-point attempts in the second half, the middle two in a 10-0 run that gave South Korea a 52-42 lead with 11:22 to play. South Korea went four minutes without scoring late in the second half but its lead never got below nine points as it ran the shot clock down on each possession. Cuba didn't convert at the other end, shooting 33 percent in the second half. Liset Castillo had 17 points for Cuba (1-4), which failed to reach the quarterfinals for the first time in its four Olympic appearances. |  | ALSO SEE U.S. women's hoops battles crowd in win over Poland | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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