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Message: [QUOTE="Plebe, post: 2974391, member: 6927"] I recorded this game and watched it this morning. It's easy to forget now that during this period the gap between the U.S. and its closest competition (Russia and Australia) was pretty small. The U.S. just barely squeaked by Russia in the semifinal, 66-62, and actually trailed for parts of the 3rd quarter against Australia before gaining a small amount of separation late in 4Q. Coach Van Chancellor (assisted by Anne Donovan, Gail Goestenkors, and C. Vivian Stringer) played basically an 8-person rotation. The starting 5 were Dawn Staley (in her last Olympics), Lisa Leslie, Sheryl Swoopes, Tina Thompson and Tamika Catchings. Thompson led a balanced scoring ledger in both the semifinal and final games. Shannon Johnson, Yolanda Griffith and Diana Taurasi (just months after finishing her UConn career) played significant minutes off the bench. Katie Smith had injured her knee in an earlier game and DNP'd. Sue Bird, Swin Cash and Ruth Riley were last off the bench and DNP'd except for about 30 seconds of garbage time. A couple interesting tidbits I would've never remembered: This was the last Olympics where FIBA used only two officials instead of three, and where the women played with the same-size ball as the men. [/QUOTE]