USA handle Montenegro’s challenge with 12-point win in FIBA World Cup
USA beat Montenegro 85-73 in their Round of 16 game in the FIBA Basketball World Cup at mall of Asia arena in Manila, the Philippines, on Friday.
Montenegro became the fisrt serious challenge for USA thanks to their size advantage, especially from the interior. Their starting big men pair, Marko Simonovic and Nicola Vucevic, are both over 2.11 meters tall. By contrast though USA have forward Josh Hart is only 1.93 tall. He is a solid defender and an underestimated rebounder, but he still had to guard a nuch taller guy in a mismatch.
Hart worked hard to keep Vucevic from powering to the low post, but Montenegro made good use of this advantage of theirs to continuously attack the rim, which, as a result, increased the defensive load on Jackson Jr. The reigning NBA Defensive Player of the Year committed two fouls in less than six minutes in the first quarter before heading to the bench.
Neither is Bobby Portis good at containing a strong center with solid offensive skills like Vacevic. Coach Steve Kerr had to send Walker Kessler, who hadn’t played much in the previous games, to the court on Friday, but it didn’t work as well as USA wanted.
Montenegro’s game strategy was problematic as well. Instead of giving full play to their big men’s size advantage in slow half-court offense, they tried to match USA in speed and made a lot of unreasonable calls when they were trying to launch early offense. That fit exactly 22 turnovers by Montenegro, scoring a massive number of easy points on the fast break.
Anthony Edwards and Austin Reaves were the best-performance players on USA.
Source(s) & Courtesy: CGTN