Team USA suffered a surprising loss in women’s 3×3 basketball at the Summer Olympics in Paris on Monday, and Hailey Van Lith believes the officials are to blame.
Van Lith made a big allegation against the referees following Team USA’s surprising 18-16 loss to Spain in overtime of the women’s 3×3 semifinals. The college basketball star claimed that Spain players flopped throughout the game but that the referees “wanted the U.S. to lose.”
“This was 1000% BS. Those refs wanted the U.S. to lose,” Van Lith said via Outkick’s Amber Harding. “They were flopping left and right. They are not that good. Great job, ladies, we know who should have won.”
Team USA later defeated Canada 16-13 to win the bronze medal, but they were favored to win gold.
Van Lith may have felt empowered to bash the Olympic referees after ESPN’s Brian Windhorst said on “The Pat McAfee Show” Monday that there is a bias against the United States in 3×3 basketball. Windhorst said the Olympics make it difficult for top U.S. players to qualify for the 3×3 tournament, which could be a factor in why Caitlin Clark did not play after the U.S. women’s basketball team snubbed her.
“There was like 15 hoops that she would have had to jump through. Because FIBA doesn’t care about ratings,” Windhorst said. “They just care about, like, growing the game elsewhere outside the U.S. So it’s not their priority.”
The theory is that the U.S. is so dominant in 5×5 basketball that the International Olympic Committee would prefer another country to prevail in 3×3. Whether Van Lith subscribes to that theory or not, she believes she and her teammates were shortchanged this year.
Van Lith is one of the top players in women’s college basketball. She announced earlier this year that she is transferring to a new school.