Key events
USA 6-5 France, 3:43 left, 1st quarter: Williams strips the ball away. They try to feed the ball inside, where Chelsea Gray has somehow been stuck guarding the taller Ayayi in the post. Gray fouls.
Ayayi commits her second foul, and Rupert dashes in to replace her.
Stewart goes to the line on another French foul and hits two free throws.
Williams misses a 3, but the rebound is tied up. Possession France.
Johannes misses, Stewart drives, but Badiane blocks her layup!
Plum replaces Gray. Wilson misses, gets her rebounds, misses again.
Johannes misses long. USA with sloppy rebounding, but Stewart blocks a shot inside.
Shot clock runs down, but AGAIN, France (Williams this time) get the rebound.
Extremely sloppy from the USA so far.
USA 4-5 France, 6:20 left, 1st quarter: They’re playing the song Just My Type during a brief break.
Steal for France, but Ayayi misses a wild layup. It’s as if the French game plan is to just fling the ball up and see if anything falls.
France already rotating players in. Here comes Marine Johannes.
Williams drives and scores! France lead!
USA 4-3 France, 7:04 left, 1st quarter: Kind of a rough start for Stewart. She carelessly picks up her foot and is called for traveling.
Williams hits a 3 to put France on the board.
USA 4-0 France, 7:52 left, 1st quarter: One miss each way, denying France the opportunity to take a lead, and Gray feeds Stewart for the first points of the game.
Williams is forcing things on the French end.
Stewart misses in transition. But after another steal, Gray threads a perfect pass to Wilson for the layup.
Tipoff: USA control.
With a rousing rendition of the French national anthem and a lot of hugs between the teams, we’re ready for tipoff …
What’s at stake – beyond basketball
The current tally of gold medals:
For those who insist that countries should be ranked by gold medals rather than total medals or a weighting system, the tiebreaker is total medals, and unless the USA have to surrender 36 silver or bronze medals, they’ll win that count handily.
So if you’re concerned with the top of the medal table, it’s all up to the US women today, in the last event of the Games, to claim that spot for the USA.
(With massive thanks to Jennifer Valente for her track cycling win today, the USA’s 39th gold.)
Scouting report: USA
They’re the USA. What else do you need to know?
Those of us of a certain age remember when beating the Soviet Union was a big, big deal. But the USA still took gold in 1988 in addition to the boycotted Games of 1984. After taking bronze in 1992, losing to the Soviet remnants on the “Unified Team” in the semifinals, then taking bronze in the 1994 World Cup after a 110-107 loss to Brazil, the US women have won seven straight Olympic golds and six of the last seven World Cups. Their only loss in Olympic or World Cup competition was in the 2006 World Cup semifinal against Russia.
Four players from the mighty Las Vegas Aces are on the team – A’ja Wilson, point guard Chelsea Gray, Jackie Young and Kelsey Plum, . Wilson was the top pick in the 2018 WNBA Draft. Gray was held back by injuries at Duke (gratuitous mention of my alma mater, the only one I’ll make), but she emerged as a WNBA star, she and Wilson were both on the gold medal squad in Tokyo. Young and Plum won gold in Tokyo on the 3×3 squad.
Before Caitlin Clark captured the public’s imagination, the young phenom in women’s basketball was Sabrina Ionescu, whose dazzling career at the University of Oregon made her the top pick in 2020.
Wilson is the team’s top scorer in France at 18.2 points per game, closely followed by Breanna Stewart at 18.0. Young has added 11.0. Wilson also leads the team in rebounds (9.6) and blocks (2.4), while Gray has 5.4 assists per game while playing less than 15 minutes per game.
The captain was a controversial addition to the team – Diana Taurasi, one of the game’s all-time greats but not a strong contributor at age 42.
In Paris, the US women have won comfortably but not overwhelmingly. Belgium, which bungled clock management down the stretch to lose the bronze-medal game to Australia earlier today, was tied with the USA after the first quarter but lost 87-74. Nigeria stayed somewhat close in the first half, fell far behind, then rallied to cut the final margin to 14.
Scouting report: France
Never a powerhouse in the 20th century and the 2000s, France have reached the semifinals for the fourth straight Olympics, taking silver in 2012 and bronze in Tokyo.
None of the team’s players are in the WNBA, but four of the team’s core players have been in the US league in the past.
Women’s basketball players tend to hop back and forth between the WNBA and European or Asian leagues to maximize their earning potential, so deciding to skip a WNBA season in an Olympic year isn’t unusual.
Gabby Williams, from Nevada originally, played for UConn and was the fourth overall pick in the 2018 WNBA Draft. She has spent five years in the WNBA and leads the French team in Paris in points per game (14.8) and minutes (26:03). Marine Johannes, who grew up in France and came across the Atlantic to spend some time with the New York Liberty, is the only other player in double figures, averaging 12.2. Johannes was the 2023 EuroCup MVP.
As with the French men’s team, the French women’s team has no shortage of centers.
Marieme Badiane (6-foot-3, no WNBA experience) is the leading rebounder with 5.6. Ilana Rupert (6-4) was the 12th pick in the 2021 WNBA Draft and won a championship with Las Vegas. The tallest (6-6) and youngest player is Cameroon-born Dominique Malonga, who has played sparingly at age 18 but maybe someone to watch in the 2025 WNBA Draft.
Badiane and Valeriane Ayayi, who once played for San Antonio, are averaging roughly one and a half blocks per game.
The captain is 35-year-old Sarah Michel.
Preamble
Will we see the Games end with the continuation of several of the Olympics’ most impressive streaks?
Or will we see a titanic upset?
And have we finished complaining that Caitlin Clark isn’t on the US roster?
Let’s take a look at the final event of the Paris Olympics …
Beau will be here shortly. In the meantime, here’s how they got on against Australia in their semifinal:
Breanna Stewart scored 16 points and the US women’s basketball team advanced to their eighth consecutive Olympic gold medal game with a 85-64 victory over Australia on Friday.
The Americans, who extended their Olympic winning streak to 60 consecutive games, will face France on Sunday. The US are trying to become the first team to win eight consecutive gold medals, breaking the tie with the American men’s program that won seven in a row from 1936-68.
“The streak is crazy,” Stewart said after the game. “I mean, they just told me when I was doing TV that it was, like, before I was born that it kind of started, which is wild.”