The U.S. Women Win Gold In An Unfamiliar Nail-Biter

In international play, U.S. women’s basketball is defined by insurmountable leads carried coolly to the end of regulation. Heading into the gold medal game, this particular squad upheld that tradition, winning their previous five games in Paris by an average margin of 18.6 points. In Sunday’s game against France, however, they won by a margin of a basketball sneaker. This was not the breezy, triumphant victory that their talent advantages might have predicted, but their hiccups made for a strange, thrilling game, culminating in a 67-66 win and an eighth consecutive gold medal for the hegemon in women’s hoops.

It was rough timing for the U.S. to play its gnarliest half of the summer, allowing their opponent to meet them at the same level. The U.S. shot 29 percent from the field; France shot 28 percent. A’ja Wilson, bricked a series puzzling layups. Her frontcourt co-star Breanna Stewart couldn’t connect either, and they combined for 3-of-16 shooting from the field in the first half. France was not exactly thriving, either, but they cobbled together just enough buckets to hang around. It took a last-second tip-in from the U.S. to tie the game at 25 apiece at halftime. At that juncture, the Americans had turned the ball over 13 times and hadn’t connected on a single three-pointer. They’d scored at least 85 points in all their previous games, and that degree of offensive ease was a distant fantasy.

The U.S. stupor carried over into the third quarter, and briefly they looked to be falling out of contention, as France ran up the lead with a 10-0 run—the first time in the tournament the U.S. had trailed any game in the second half. In time the overdogs got into the game with some lively, guard-heavy lineups that cracked the French perimeter defense and wore down their legs in transition. Wilson leapt out of her funk, too, and soon enough was a terror all over the floor: drawing fouls with her physicality down low, erasing shots at the rim, adding 10 points in the third quarter. Kahleah Copper was the other standout for the U.S. down the stretch, locking up the French at the point of attack and getting downhill with urgency. Even when Jackie Young fouled out in the fourth quarter, the U.S. guard depth was too strong for them to miss a beat.

It’s hard to say how, exactly, but France clung on, even as they struggled to create separation and their late-game offensive approach devolved into a wild-eyed pursuit of threes. A burst of self-created brilliance from wing scorer Gabby Williams kept the margins close, and it was a last heave from Williams—a leaning, banked buzzer-beater—that left the final result in limbo for a moment.

But Wiliams had her foot on the the line; there would be no overtime. Breanna Stewart called it immediately.

“I am so proud of the resilience that my team showed. We could have fumbled it many times, but we pulled through,” said Wilson, who finished with a team-high 21 points to go along with 13 rebounds and four blocks. If there’s a lesson here, for both U.S. squads emerging from tightly contested gold medal games against France, it’s that you can barely get away with a sloppy half of basketball. The rest of the world is getting good enough to punish that.