BERLIN — The festival begins. All 16 nations played in eight games at the FIBA World Cup across two arenas. At Max-Schmeling-Halle, the Australian Opals and Puerto Rico gritted it out in a nailbiter.
Australia got out to a blistering start against a resilient Puerto Rico who fought back after an early 17-4 hole, biting back to 19-16 after a tough turnaround jimmy from Trinity San Antonio. Yesterday, head coach Gerardo Batista spoke about how he wanted his team to play Puerto Rico basketball. Today, he assessed his unit on how they did that in their first game against Australia with The IX Sports:
“Sort of. For stretches of the game I think we did it,” Batista explained. “We were, I think, too desperate today on offense. To try to beat a kind of team like that, you have to be disciplined. You have to be more disciplined on offense, more disciplined on defense. And I think we went out of that, being disciplined.”
He touched on their resilience in the opening frame, which laid the way for Puerto Rico to be well within the game through the end of the third quarter:
“That’s what we usually do. We usually don’t quit. We try to keep going, um, you know, if the first five didn’t do it, like the way it was supposed to, we have players coming in off the bench and trying to put pressure and try to get rebounds and try to hustle. That’s what we try to do. So I think we did a good job on getting back into the game.”
With a very new group and a late scratch to Sami Whitcomb for the Australian Opals, questions on how this would be absorbed by the rotation came halfway through the first quarter. First off the bench for Australia were Alex Wilson and Zitina Aokuso, closely followed by Chloe Bibby, who got her first minutes of the tournament at the three. Opals head coach Sandy Brondello spoke on the early rotation with The IX Sports:
“We had our rotation set. We haven’t really had much time to know what works and what doesn’t work so these experiences are good for us,” Brondello said. “So those were the three that we wanted to lean into. I thought it took away from our pace, we had a great start but we’ll learn from that. I think we still have good depth even though unfortunately [Alanna Smith] went down.”
Smith had an exemplary first half, with 10 points, eight rebounds, two assists, a steal and a block in 12 minutes. Double those numbers to 24 minutes and you get a monster double-double in a short amount of time. Stepping up massively in her absence was Zitina Aokuso, who ended up playing 22 minutes. She reflected on her World Cup debut in an interview with The IX Sports:
“I mean, the first World Cup is always nerve-wracking. But I think, you know, the girls trust me, Sandy trusts me to start [the second half] and I think that was enough for me to play the rest of the game out,” Aokuso said.
Aokuso then spoke on if a bigger minutes load was the plan heading in to the game:
“No. But, you know, Sandy is really big on making sure that you’re ready. So I think I was ready for whatever I needed to do. But hopefully [Smith]’s good. I think she will be and, yeah, we’ll see what happens.”
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The rotation was a question even heading into the game after Australia learned that they would be with captain Whitcomb.
“You think you know your rotation, but then you have to go from what you see and what the opponents doing and how we’re executing our gameplan,” Brondello said. “We made some adjustments, obviously, throughout, with what we saw. And I think that’s what we’re gonna have to do and continue to evaluate every game. We believe in all of these players, but a lot of them haven’t played together. We’ve got two new players, obviously replacing Sami and Cayla George. But you saw the most experienced players had a better feel. So we’ve just gotta use up as many minutes as we can to build up that chemistry because we’re going to have to rely on everyone moving forward.”
Whitcomb’s replacement Miela Sowah got first quarter minutes just five days after scoring her first points in the WNBA for the Golden State Valkyries, and a week and a half finding she would be traveling to Berlin. It’s been a whirlwind for Sowah:
“You know what? Unreal, honestly,” she told The IX Sports about the experience. “Like yeah, living the dream. It’s been an exciting five days and will continue for the rest of the night, until the end of the World Cup. So yeah, really exciting.”
Puerto Rico dictated large stretches of the second and third quarters, but the Opals played the game on their terms throughout the fourth quarter. It ended up the most convincing opening game for the Opals at a major tournament, following a loss against Nigeria at the 2024 Olympics, a nailbiter against Brazil in the qualifiers to said Olympics and a loss to France at the last World Cup in 2022.
U.S. beats China, 94-61
There was a strong showing for Australia and Puerto Rico and an even stronger one for the U.S. and China. China’s fans remain undefeated for atmosphere, but the U.S. put up a fight. On the court, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Not only were the U.S. up early, there was no fight in sight from the Chinese. Sure, they had the scoreboard at eight halfway through the second quarter, but this wasn’t much of a consolation prize.
Among a host of WNBA All-Stars, Rhyne Howard and her trademark jumpshot led the way early after subbing in halfway through the first quarter. She would end up equal on points with Paige Bueckers and Caitlin Clark, continuing to brighten the future of American basketball. U.S. head coach Kara Lawson was first up at the postgame press conference:
“I thought it was a great team effort for us,” Lawson said. “You’re in this pool play scenario and there’s obviously the goal at the end of it to win the pool and have the bye, straight to the quarterfinals. So, from a tournament piece to start off against a really good team. China presented a lot of problems for us. Their size in the front court clearly is a matchup problem for I think every team in the world. I thought we did a pretty good job managing that. We just got a lot of contributions from our players.”
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Lawson rattled off Rhyne Howard, Jackie Young, Breanna Stewart and Caitlin Clark and spoke on how each of them impacted the game in their own ways as a lens into how the squad came together for the win. Clark was sat next to Lawson and followed up:
“I’m just super excited. Being surrounded by five people that have won gold medals before at the highest level you just try to follow their lead,” Clark said. “Take every bit of wisdom that they can give you. Whatever role I have I’m gonna come in and do it to the best of my ability and play hard. That’s what’s so fun about it, I look around at our team and there’s so many talented people. Just a joy to be here, to be in Germany and I thought the crowd was fun too so I enjoyed that.”
Even with the obvious gap in talent against the Chinese, it was an impressive, mature, professional win for a young U.S. unit.
World Cup excitement builds as games kick off
Over at Berlin Arena, Japan and Mali combined for 199 points, with Japan coming away as five point victors. For anyone who isn’t a maths fan, that meant a final scoreline of 102-97. Korea would also take care of Nigeria, 99-81.
Belgium, Turkey, Czechia and Italy would take care of Max-Schmeling-Halle in the evening as fans poured into Berlin Arena to see Germany start their World Cup campaign against Spain. Behind one basket, the media were feverishly trying to find patches of quiet to work while German ultras were singing in chorus, banging on drums and standing up behind the other basket, all game long.
The end of the first quarter would see Spain in favor 24-13. If you were a security guard with their back towards the court and facing the crowd, you wouldn’t believe that for a second.
It seems that everyone in Germany has been taking their hosting responsibilities seriously. Whether that’s fans, players or Berliners, everyone is playing their part in the show. The team themselves even wanted to capture the feeling of Berlin in their photoshoot, not just Germany.
After yesterday’s training, German wing Emily Bessoir spoke on the photo shoot:
“It was really fun honestly, we had four different stations for photos and videos but then the setup was just very fitting to the vibe of Berlin,” she said. “Like very rough but then cool at the same time, graffiti. I liked it a lot. It was set up in an older factory hall, I guess. Yeah, I thought it was really cool. It was fun.”
Berlin born Lina Sontag chimed in on what hosting meant for her:
“Honestly, for me, it’s really nice because I’m from here, lots of my friends were in that fan block area. So I already heard them the whole time. The atmosphere is really nice. It’s really cool to have everyone on our side.”
Sometimes, the basketball can get lost in the sauce for a host nation. There was a tonne of momentum behind Germany, but Spain had their own ideas for the outcome. Hidden amongst the fanfare in the eclectic host city was one of the best basketballing nations in the history of the sport redefining who they were. It was a methodical game from Spain, who looked like they didn’t need to shake off any cobwebs. They produced from the tip off, with the ball constantly moving on offense.
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The whole team was on the same page about the task at hand, with Alba Torrens, head coach Miguel Mendez and Raquel Carrera giving eerily similar responses to The IX Sports. Torrens went first:
“I think that today we did a great job and my mind goes that we are a team. I think that today is a victory of the team. Everyone put in their part for the team. I think that we did really well. And right now, our mind is almost not here no more, it’s in tomorrow. We play tomorrow morning so there is not so many time to recover and go back here.”
Followed by Carrera: “We start, from the first minute, we compete. We weren’t just good on offence, but defence too. We prepared [well for] the game. It was difficult for us because we had a lot of players coming later. We had players that were out of the team, but this is our team now. For us, now we’re focused on tomorrow, but today we made a really good game.”
Then coach Mendez: “It was a tough game for us. We try to be ready to play every game. This is how we’re starting and we played against a very good team. It’s a team with good players and some stars; Nyara [Sabally], [Leonie Fiebich], Luisa [Geiselsoder]. We tried to prepare [for the] game in the best way possible. But, we’re thinking tomorrow, we’re thinking about Japan. This is a short tournament and every mistake is a high pressure. We [just] try to do our best.”
This was a statement from Spain. They didn’t want to dwell on a 30 point win, it was on to the next. There’s a bigger task at hand for Spain. They’re carrying themselves as a group who are planning on settling in to Berlin for a while.
Over at Max-Schmeling-Halle, Turkey matched Belgium through the first half, but the Belgians separated themselves in somewhat similar fashion to group mates Australia earlier in the day. They came away 89-75, with 49 of those points thanks to Emma Meesseman and Julie Vanloo. If the first day of games is anything to go off of, Group C is shaping up to be the toughest group.
One late point would separate Czechia and Italy through the first half, 32-31. Two countries with everything to play for. The win would be historic, but pale in comparison to the hope of advancing through the group phase that it would afford. Italy made this hope theirs in the second half, winning 63-54.
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After 32 years between World Cup appearances, Italy head coach Andrea Capobianco was straight into the details, speaking in the press conference:
“At the beginning we were missing a lot of our aggressiveness. This gave Czechia a lot of points and a lot of opportunity to score. We were not ready to play the game we expect to play. We fixed that aggressiveness in the second half and we kept them to 54 points. That’s good for us and now we move on to the next game.”
The overall spectacle of Germany and Spain at Berlin Arena bout was always going to be tough to follow but Hungary and France were up to the task. Even with the crowd a little more sparse than the preceding game, Hungary packed their drums and were chanting from every corner of the court.
This was almost a carbon copy of Spain’s emphatic win. There was a common theme for countries throughout today’s games; if your crowd wins, your basketball team loses. At half time, France were tripling Hungary, 61-20. Both teams still finished playing the game and the Hungarian chanting went through a blowout loss.
Despite only being 28 years old, center Virag Takacs-Kiss has been thrust into an interesting position as the veteran for two up and coming talents in Dorka Juhasz and Kinga Josepovits. Takacs-Kiss is also still firmly in her prime and has had an illustrated career throughout Europe, so juggling performance, mentoring and representing her nation, especially the travelling fans, is a very tough act. She told The IX Sports about all of aspects of the experience:
“I mean it’s amazing that we have a lot of fans even here,” Takacs-Kiss said. “They were celebrating us after a huge loss, which obviously gave us a lot of energy. I feel sorry for them because so many of them showed up today and we couldn’t really show up. So I just really hope. We’re gonna take everything from this game, what we have to, and we’re gonna show our real face in the next two games.”
That’s exactly the message you want from a leader. On leadership, she spoke more:
“I always wanted to be the one who was gonna help them on and off the court. I feel like it’s kind of a new generation for us. There are many new players. We have a long way ahead of us. I’m gonna try to do my best. I’m happy that there are many other players who have a lot of experience. And also we have a really good young generation and they can help us a lot. So I’m just trying to stay positive, trying to help them off the court now. Especially now because [of the loss]. It is what it is. We have to take everything that we can. But we have to focus on the next game because it will be even more important.”
At the end of the first day, standings are looking exactly as they would have been expected. The road to those standings didn’t look convincing aside from the U.S. in the morning, Spain in the evening and France at night. Is that the sort of poetic foreshadowing sports fans long for? Only time will tell.
