Foxtel says the Game will be televised from 7:05 am Thursday morning

Oh boy imagine if we won, what would you do?

I dont know Benno, but man I would be higher than Nate Jawai's voice!

If we win I expect this from Julia Gillard. "any employer or persons of influence that penalises a co worker or trusted member of their staff for not presenting themselves to their place of employ today should have the decision respected"

I'd happily crack a beer for the boys even if its only 9.00am

I will run naked through parliament house and moon the prime minister if Australia won. luckily for everyone Australia wont win, but i hope they play good tough basketball and make the US play hard for their win. i will be happy if we keep it within 20 points.

if we win ill be laughing to the bank with my 26 to 1 odds thats what ill be doing!

not about points for me.

have to judge how well we play from watching the game and seeing how our team operates as a unit.

play 4 qtrs of strong team basketball that we can be proud of will be a huge confidence boost for the team going forward.

this game is a really good opportunity for us.

I just hope the Boomers compete for 4 quarters, limit their mistakes and have a few highlights of their own.

Dare to Dream Boomers!

I won't be doing any work tomorrow if we win!

But in all seriousness, if we can take care of the ball and limit turnovers, that will minimise the fast break points USA live off in International competition.

Problem for us, to be competitive, we have to play a half court game and this is not one of our stengths. We will have to nail the three-ball if we are going to keep in touch.

I am desperately hoping we can pull off one of the greatest Olympic upsets off all time. My head tells me if we can keep this to loss less than 15, we have done remarkably well.

Go Boomers!

Some reading to whet the appetite...

ESPN: Olympic hoops quarterfinal preview

CBS Sports: Saint Mary's star Dellavedova gets his shot at Americans in Olympics


ESPN: The top 10 of Olympics group play

SMC: Aussies Confident Against US NBA Stars

Some more articles to get excited by!

BA: London - Boomers vs USA Quarter Final Preview

BA: Who can stop King James?

BA: Welcome home, Boomers (article by Paul!)(


The Age: Boomers ready to bounce the big dogs, despite pay gap

Would be amazing if we won. Just think the second half will kill us, US have too many weapons. Everyone wants the US to lose in the Olympics and they know that, plus they are out to prove they are better than the 92 Dream team.
My pipe dream tells me we pull a major upset...but reality is if we can stay within 20 then we should all be satisfied!

"Consistency" will be the key for the Boomers. anything less will be a defeat.

Maintain a gap or possibly make a safe score gap and finish them in the 4th quarter.

No I'm not dreaming, its about time.

Go Boomers!

Andrew Gaze on Twitter:

"Any boss who sacks anyone for turning up late for work on Thursday is a bum!! GO BOOMERS!!"

Mills has to take more shots and hopefully will get his rhythm early in the game. Seems that is the game plan and will be needed more against USA.

Argentina could have won the game had they have a player like Mills who likes to score.

USA beat them by 126 points but the Argentines couldn't produce more than 97 points.

None of the American journos know anything about us. All of the power rankings after group play and any article that has the potential to mention us in a good light just doesn't. I hope we can surprise them with how we play, I'd love to be as competitive as possible.

I'd love to win, and I really don't know what I would do if we do... I can't even begin to think of it.

' Even the commentators need a ticket to get in.'
Gaze on Ch9 , just then . ' It's the hottest ticket at the Games. '
Seems the build up has begun already.

The line is US by 33 points.

I reckon that's about right.

US are $1.01, which is basically saying if this game was played 100 times, we would win once.

I reckon that the US are overs there. If I had a spare $1M i'd put it on them and you'd be a lock in for $10,000.

Russia Luthiania on TV now...Havent seen bugger all Australian games on 9..but russian and Luthiania they show...soooooo freaking useless they are.

PE Faculty meeting at my place around 9:30am if we win...

Not much chance unfortunately. Down by 20 will be respectable.

' Ya won't hear anything from me if we win , I'll be running around and jumping all over the place . ' Gaze also told us on nine .

I predict we will keep it respectably close for 30 of the 40 minutes - and get blown out by 25-30 in two five minute blocks at some stage across the rest of the game.

farken 5:15am in Malaysia :(

hehe, dont hate for the things we dont understand. yes, Mills has to take more shots because the team lacks depth

^ rubbish

anyones got the link to the game? thanks in adv

pretty decent 1st qtr.
Not finishing in close but keeping the US uncomfortable on both ends

Missed a lot of easy baskets

If we had only hit free throws and made some of those easy buckets inside!

Solid first qtr, but some easy layups and FT's would have us tied...

Very whistle-happy refs will hurt us much more than them (yeah, I rate their bench a little higher than ours)

super assist Delly

"this opponent is too easy, we are going to make it a real challenge by missing every free throw we can and scoring the old fashioned way"

There's 3 seconds to remember for Brad Newley, Burn Kobe then draw the and-1 on Durant

Joey Ingles playing for an NBA opportunity

All we need is a 70pt 2nd half like we had against GB and we're in this thing :)

We're having a good crack, but we're not strong enough on the defensive boards (Kevin Love esp is smashing us) and when Dellavedova goes off the floor our offence stagnates.

That's how you start a 3rd qtr

What a start to the 3rd! Go Boomers!

C'mon Hey Zues just hand it to Kobe next time

aaaaand... kobe

know who else in enjoying this "close" game?

Argentina...and possibly Spain

There it is!

Was surprised when Baynes wasnt getting much playing time this game in the first half... now I know why he wasnt :p

I reckon Delly (despite his athletic limitations) has booked himself a spot in the 2013 NBA Draft from this tournament.

Yeah, refs getting talked into a few calls by the US grunting and crying on any minor contact

Harry Balls - that's how they are coached in the juniors to grunt and scream like a WTA player.

Just out of curiosity are Yanks as embarrassed by the "USA" chant as many Aussies are by the "Oi oi oi" chant?

We get called for shit and they dont even call Lebron when he nearly shoves Delly off his feet from behind

Gotta love Gaze's diplomacy. "The players have lost confidence in the ref's ability not to be intimidated by the reputations of Team USA. Not that i'm saying that the call was incorrect" Gaze continues to score!!

David Stern's in the crowd, perhaps he had a meeting with the refs before the game. He's not the biggest fan of his "product" risking injury while he makes little/no money in the deal. His boys have played damn well but they've been looked after too.

To be fair to Baynes, that kind of comment has been warranted most of the time when the whistle is blown.

Jus out of curiosity what happens for the 5th-8th place classifications. Do we still have some consolation games?

These refs are just terrible!

This just got ugly

That's good to hear - the Boomers are starting to click.... We can finish up to 5th which would be cool given how they looked in the pool games.

Sorry misunderstood - so no classification matches? What they rank based on pool results? Bummer.

This just drives home the point of winning early. We are a better team than Brazil, and we didn't show it on the day. We beat Brazil and we could realistically be playing for the Gold medal when all is said and done.

Also, a bit of a shame to let this one get blown out like this. Would have been able to hold our heads high with a less than 20 point margin.

Hate how they got rid of classification games. They can be close and still intense.

That was awful coaching in the final minutes. Why not give guys like PC and Gibbo some court time... give them the thrill of lining up against some of the NBAs best players in the final game of the tournament. Definately need a change at the top in regards of coaching. You pick players on a team for a reason, from first picked til last. You dont pick them to fill space on the bench. Use them... or dont pick them!!

Might just be frustration talking but those USA supporters up the top seemed especially douchey. It was nice for Baynes to shut them up at the end with that block

Nice job Boomers.
35 pretty good, solid minutes. 5mins where we dropped our heads and the US got crazy hot shooting the 3.

No Boomer was outclassed out there against the probable Gold medal winners.

Welcome to the NBA Joseph Ingles

Decent for 2.5-3 quarters before getting sloppy in the fourth. Went away from team play as Mills tried to do it all and the US capitalised. I don't know why Brown tolerates that when it's not working.

As Gaze said in the commentary, bit unfortunate to see a blow-out after a solid effort before that.

Ball needs to go through Delly and Ingles, as they are more measured heads with distributing.

Ingles with 19/8/6 in the full 40 minutes. Thought he was great. 6/10 FG.

Why do the boomers always start pool games so ice cold? Is it our prep? What is it?

People need to stop bitching about the coaching sheesh, we have 1 fringe NBA player and for alot of the game we played it close.

I think he's done a good job with the talent he's had on hand, and if they had hit there shots a little better in the first two game's it might have been a different game today(you can't blame the coach when your players miss wide open shots)

Anthony Davis looked like he wanted to get into it with Baynes after that last second block too... I wonder if Baynes said something... Some may disagree but i love the fact that Baynes is "full of piss and vinegar" - he will be a handy player for the boomers down the line i think...

Joe Ingles was out best player for the tourny. he has taken his game to another level. very good all round game. Patty has his time, Delly was good until a few TO's in the last 5 mins of the 4th, but a pretty good tourny for him too. Would be great if we could build the team around Bogut, Ingles and Mills. If only we played the last few games against spain and brazil, we may not have lost to either spain or brazil. Hopefully next tourny we can start stronger and avoid 4th place because we can certainly win a medal.

Our 'bigger' guys didnt give much at all throughout the tournament: Worthington, Baynes, Maric, Neilson. Ingles was incredible.

Had we hit out FTs at a better rate in the 1st half things may have turned out different. That put us in a small hole which just got more and more difficult as the pressure piled on. All in all i'm ok with this - but not the pool games and especially the Brazil game.

Up until the 4th quarter...everything went better than expected.

Missed the last quarter and will watch on the PVR tonight.

Great effort up until 3qtr time...

Ingles CV was enhanced!

I'd actually prefer Ingles to get minutes for a Euroleague team than get little to no court time in the NBA. Although Ingles wallet may disagree with me.

Thats great rjd, thanks for letting us know. I wonder what Ingles would prefer for himself.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think we have ever been that close to the US team with less than 5 mins to play.

I thought everyone was really up for this game. Just a pity we didn't have the belief to shoot this way against Brazil and Spain.

I think Ingles showed he is now our best player. Still needs more consistency, but is really starting to realise his potential.

Patty has some great skills, but we really need him to become a better facilitator. When Dellavedova goes to the bench, we just have noone to create for us.

Speaking of Delly, he played a very nice game apart from the last few mins where the haranguing pressure from Westbrook and Kobe finally caused him to make some mistakes. Definitely improved his chances of being drafted into the NBA next year and has really made a big difference to the Boomers offence.

I think we finally started to see what Andersen can do offensively in this tournament. He'll probably have one more crack in the 2014 Worlds but age will likely force him into a more limited role by the next Olympics.

Speaking of Nielsen, that was almost certainly his last Olympics. Has been a very good Boomer for a long time, so well done to the big fella!

Newley, whilst he hasn't become the player I hoped he would a few years ago, has played pretty well in a more limited role in this tournament. Love his defence, rebounding and ability to finish at the rim.

All in all I think we have shown some signs of progress since our last Olympics. If we can develop a few good talents like Exum, Simmons and Drmic over the next four years and bring a healthy Bogut on board I think we might be in the hunt for a medal in 2016.

"if a guy can drop 20 or close to on the best the USA has to offer he is atleast as good as a NBA 6th-8th man if not a starter"

While I agree with you that Gaze and Penney and perhaps Ingles soon, could be good players in the NBA, it would actually be more difficult to 'drop 20' against an NBA team because they scout your tendencies out much better. Team USA doesn't really worry too much about defence from what I've seen.

Beantown, I agree with most of your comments, except those about Patty. Until we can develop a go-to scorer that is more reliable than the 22ppg we got out of Patty, I think it's best to continue to play him exclusively as a shooting guard. Whilst I agree that the offence stagnated when Delly went to the bench, I think that had more to do with not having a reliable back-up point guard to replace Delly. This meant Patty was switching between the 1 and 2 spots, which hurt our offensive flow at times. I blame Brett Brown for this. Whilst I give BB a lot of credit for how hard our guys played, the physical shape they were in, and the defence we played, he took way too long to elevate Delly to the starting five. It was obvious from the very first quarter of the first game against the Greek team that when Delly was on, our offence flowed, and we he sat down things got stagnant. So I'm not entirely sure why it took until the very last warm-up game against France to start Delly. Had we done this earlier, it would have given Patty a lot more minutes at the two spot, and perhaps he doesn't shoot the ball cold as ice in that crucial first game against Brazil.

Great effort by the Boomers

I'm really proud of the way this Boomers team has played, in terms of effort, toughness and tenacity, that has been missing for years.

I think we could all agree that this team, if there were playoffs for "consolation positions", could have well and truly finished fifth. Hopefully all our big guns are in for the worlds in 2014, and this form is carried over.

That Brazil games was it for us, though.

after seeing the game in person all i can say is that ref with the grey hair should be dragged out the back and shot... i have never seen such one sided refereeing since well, the 2008 olympics... how is it USA gets in a little bit of trouble and all of a sudden a phantom foul...

the guys played great though until last 5 minutes... boards killed us though, we need to fix our big man issues on the glass, we shouldn't have our leading rebounders coming from the 1 and 2 man positions, if it wasn't for the rebounding we probably would have taken the lead a handful of times...

A big question mark over this tournament for us was the disappearing act by Aleks Maric. What is going on there?

Good call Mick. Maric was by far our most disappointing player this tournament. He looked lost on offence, and didn't seem to give the effort required on the defensive end. He doesn't use his size to his advantage at all. If nothing else, at 7'0" and 125kgs he should at least be a dependable defensive rebounder.

If Bogut is healthy, Jawai commits to the program, and Baynes continues his development, there is no way Maric will play at the World Cup in 2014.

Beantown, we were much closer with five minutes to play in 2004 and I think pretty similar in 1996 but that was a long time ago.

Today was our biggest loss to the USA in an Olympic competition, equal with 1964, which is a shame given the effort the guys put in and that great spurt at the start of the third quarter, which I thought might have been enough to stop it being a complete blowout.

Very poor effort from Brown coaching tonight

Bringing on Baynes but benching Delly doesn't make sense. Patty ran the point very poorly and resulted in ton of turnovers.
Benching Delly for so long in the first half???why.
Also a timeout should've been called in the last quarter before the US really good started on their points off turnovers. The USA is full of talent and EGO they rely on a 'run'. call a timeout, settle things down. yes australia would still have lost but the last 3.5 minutes was embarrassing especially considering the good effort the boomers put in to the previous 3 & 1/5 quarters Australia played, and the overall score doesn't reflect that.

Did Brown at all talk to his bigs about boxing out?

Reffing was disgraceful, all the US have to do is an obnoxious grunt and they go the free throw line.its funny that when the lanes closed up at International ball Lebron really hasn't been able to penetrate and miss his layups like he normally gets to do with Miami

Ingles again showed he is NBA ready, he shot 6/8 tonight, has shot well all tournament has made good decisions, passing well and penetrates well..has looked better than Patty.

this game would have been considerably closer and not out of reach with Bogut as an inside shot blocking presence and rebounder, as well as a very good back to the basket scorer and passer.

Like I've said before: I would really like to see the +/- numbers for player lineup combos on this Boomers team. Would be verrrry interesting.

Any know if such statistical data exists for Olympics games?

Australia played much better against Russia than they did against the USA. I needed to be Australia's best game to get close to the US but it certainly wasn't that.

Mick, Andrew Bogut has asked that very same question but no one seemed to be able to find it.


Someone asked Bogut who was Australia's best player via twitter. His reply:

Andrew Bogut ?@AndrewMBogut
Great effort by our @aussieboomers . Who was our best player? For me @Joeingles7 .He Scored, distributed the ball and played D.

Oh and @matthewdelly has a very bright future. People forget he still has one more year left at St Marys Uni in the states! #purePG

have to agree with him

I think a large part of us getting outrebounded in this game was the fact that the US shot a lot of 3's. We often had numbers crashing the boards but long shots=long rebounds and they got a lot of thier O-boards away from the hoop.

I'm not saying our bigs weren't blameless but it explains why our 1&2 got significant rebound stats.

im not sure why the defence on durant wasn't to get up on him and make him put it on the floor where you can clog up the middle at fiba more so than the nba. the guy is otherwise automatic from the 3, and you would rather a forced 2 than an automatic 3

Vart, I think you are talking about the present, in which case I agree with you, Patty is just an undersized SG.

I was talking with an eye to the future though. It just isn't ideal to have to play a guy with Patty's physical attributes at SG on offence and then have our guards swap assignments on the defensive end. Good teams will exploit this every chance they get.

Also, because Patty can't manage the point, it forces us to play both him and Delly, giving us a small backcourt and no guard depth.

Fast-forward a few years and hopefully we'll have some long, athletic guards who will give us much better scoring. Eg, Exum or Drmic or even Newley if he can find his shot. It would be nice to be able to start the best of those guys next to Ingles and just run one of Delly and Mills in the starting lineup (depending on whether Mills improves his PG skills).

Four years from now, if things go well, we could have Bogut, Simmons, Ingles, Exum and Mills as starters. That would be a very athletic lineup with good size, quickness and scoring.

Not for a second suggesting the result could have been different but the refs really seemed to do everything they could to help USA. We got called for some straight out nonexistent contact while some US players hammered our guys and got away with it. And the refs bailed them out on offense a few times as well.

There is an obvious gulf in class between the two teams but the ref's performance was still dispiriting.

yeah agree Jez, many average calls in favour of USA, including one with the big ugly white Kevin throw Patty to the ground in front of the refs but no whistles was blown..if a Team USA player grunted on the bench they probably would have gone to the line to shoot

Kobe has been on a diet of rice the past few days!

Fair enough Beantown. You're right, I was talking about right now. I like the prospect of that starting line-up, that would be something to see!

Hopefully Patty spends the next two years at Spurs learning all that he can about playing the point from Tony Parker and Pop.

It would certainly be in our long-term interests to go with that line-up and have Delly as the steady hand to come off the bench and settle things down when need be.

I know Simmons is 6'7' at the moment, but I was wondering (this is for those in the know at junior level) does he project to be a power forward in the future, or a big 3 man?

Beantown,

I'm curious to understand why you see our guards swapping assignments on the defensive end as being possibly exploited by good teams?

Anon^ I did see that interview. I guess LBJ played most of his minutes for USA at the four spot. So perhaps Simmons may do the same at the international level.

@GordonLiddy, no doubt Ingles should accept an NBA contact if offered. I was basing my statement on what I think will develop his game -- especially for future Boomers campaigns. Ingles has been in form and consistent in this tournament, but that hasn't been the case throughout his career. I can't see his consistency necessarily improving sitting at the end of an NBA bench. A prominent role on a Euroleague team might better address that concern, continue to expand his versatile game in a FIBA competition, while remaining against some quality opposition. Of course Ingles himself would take other things into consideration, too. He is NBA quality, for sure, and the NBA is always nice to have on your resume. Either way, his performance during these Games should open up some opportunities for him. Great to see.

You also have to wonder the odds of him being released for this coming season, Barcelona would prob ask for a pretty big buyout.

Coach K: "Mills has had an incredible tournament, he's one of the best", I'm assuming he meant one of the best throughout this Olympics, but a very good recognition from one of the better coaches going around.

http://www.nba.com/video/channels/aiming_for_gold/2012/08/08/usab_krzyzewski_postgame.nba/

Always amusing how the best team gets the most help from the refs.

Mills is Australia's Iverson and Delly's Nash lmao.

Isn't that reflected by their respective impact at St Mary's? Mills was a standout with some big individual performances, but Delly made his teammates much better with even better results.

Delly picked up 2 fouls in the first quarter that's why he was sitting when Baynes checked in.

Maric was a bit of a let down all tournament. Would also have loved PC to slide into the lineup a little more than he did when Delly was sitting.

Add Bogut for Maric, Jawai for Neilson and possibly Markovic? or any other PG for Gibson and we are in pretty good shape.

I'm a bit dubious about how realistic we are being by judging the Boomers with Bogut being added to the mix. He hasn't played for the Boomers in 4 years and has had repeated injuries that limited his playing time generally across those years.

Does anyone know how he's going with his recovery and conditioning after the broken ankle? Do we think he'll come back a stronger, less injury-prone player?

I'd like to see him out there but am not sure where he stands, now. How keen is he to play international basketball, or does he feel like the risk of another injury that curtails his professional career might be too great? Has anyone seen any reporting on his future ambitions and how they affect playing with the Boomers?

The great thing Bogut brings is an intelligent, big and reasonably athletic anchor to the aggressive defence that is our natural style and that we need to play.

Offensively, Goorjian showed in 2008 that he is best when left to play a little bit, not pigeon holed like he has been in the US.

Bogut will be a big help, and if Beveridge is the next coach I think he could really cut loose.

Well the bookies 33 point spread was spot on the mark. Not surprised in the least to see the way this one panned out.

Reply to Johnny_sack.

When I was younger I always thought the Aussie chant was:
Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, fight, fight fight.
I think this sounds a lot better and is more appropriate that would fire up any Aussie team.
Oi, oi, oi is just embarrassing after a while.

lol, i was watching and the usa guys frustrated with actual defense continually led with their forearm and pushed off players. happened every minute of the game.

also, i saw so many players, especially james push off shoulders for rebounds. i know its really easy to do ( by accident) against shorter guys cause ive had that trouble. just before you leap you go to make contact and you find their shoulder with your palm just before you leap. refs shouldve called that everytime.

lol , i had to laugh at westbrooks defense on delly that lead to that big run in the fourth.

was going windmall arms at delly. maybe caught the ball eventually but was way way heavier contact then newley and the rest of our team were getting called on for their on-ball defense.

im very very proud of the boomers.

us kept their a team on the court 98% of the game really.

as already mentioned was maybe 2 hot runs by the us to push the score out and one of those runs was based solely on horrific umpiring ( in relation to its consistancy to what was being called in-game) mentioned above.

and all without our best player.

i do have to say

ingles, great work. star

delly, future. such a gun. put his hand up for nba.

baynes. stood up for me. work with delly was special.

newley, great to have a guy with his athleticism who can blow past players. gives us something else and his length and speed on defense helps us with matchups.

mills. great work to be the go-to scorer. as others i like him pairing delly at the 2. that pairing going forward is going to be special.

anderson, great mid-range shooting touch!

In all honesty. What nationality was the grey haired ref? It seems USA get a ref of their own every Olympics that helps them out

Big Ads,

1) In transition, if our PG and SG are playing on a different man on offence, to whom they have on defence, there are a few more secs needed to find their man and good teams can take advantage of this confusion.

2) With a smaller backcourt (Delly @ 6'4" the biggest) teams with a bigger backcourt player are more likely to be able to take advantage of mismatches.

Now I'm not saying Delly or Mills have been bad defensively, but at times Mills lack of size in particular has been exploited.

What I am saying is that in an ideal world, the future Boomers team would find a bigger, more athletic starting guard that would address this weakness.

So if you interchange Delly and Mills at PG, rather than play both together, you open up that SG spot to a bigger, more athletic player.

That allows us to put some pressure on passing lanes with two long wing players, improves our ability to protect the defensive glass and hopefully also gives us a backcourt player who can drive and score in traffic in the halfcourt and also make the open three.

(A big part of the reason we get stagnant offensively is because in the halfcourt, neither of our guards is a serious threat to score at the rim, so teams can play up on them and force them to drive into trouble).

Of course, this all depends on Mills improving his PG skills, because as of now he is purely a SG with good ball-handling!

Beantown, the guard you've described sounds very much like Dante Exum, so it will be interesting to see how he can fit into the mix. Currently plays mostly PG, but is 6'4", and a super athlete with long arms. Will be interesting to see if he grows to somewhere around the 6'6" mark over the next couple of years.

Yep, Exum is exactly the guy I'm thinking about. You'd think he'd grow a little bit since he is still only 16 or so. His dad was taller than that.

Hoping Simmons ends up about 6'9-10 too. He looks like a super athlete and it would be great to have an athlete with enough size to start at PF for us alongside Bogut. All of a sudden, we don't get pushed around on the boards like we have been and we are well and truly in a game like the one we just lost to the US.