Debrecen, Hungary (Aug. 14, 2021) – The USA Women’s U19 World Cup Team (6-0) opened up a 20-point halftime lead and ran away with a 75-42 semifinal victory over host Hungary (4-1) on Saturday evening in Debrecen, Hungary. The win advanced the USA to a ninth-straight FIBA U19 World Cup for Women gold medal game, a streak that dates to 2005.
Sonia Citron (The Ursuline School/Scarsdale,
“I could not have gotten any of the points I had without my teammates,” said Citron. “We have such a selfless team; we’re always moving the ball around. They were able to find me, and I was getting easy, lucky layups.
“Our bigs have been doing so great,” Citron added. “I don’t think they get the credit they deserve. Between Lauren Betts, Lauren Ware, Amari (DeBerry), Jersey (Wolfenbarger), Sania Feagin), all of our bigs do such a great job rebounding, screening, all the little things that you might not see in the stat sheets. Without them, we would not be able to do what we do.”
The day’s second semifinal features Australia (4-1) versus Mali (4-1) at 2:30 p.m. EDT, and the USA will take on the winner of that contest in the gold medal game, which will stream live Aug. 15 on ESPN+ at 2:30 p.m. EDT.
“We are where we wanted to be from day 1,” said USA head coach Cori Close (UCLA). “No matter who we face, we’ll be ready. This team really wants to compete, they’re excited about the opportunity and have sacrificed a lot. They want to finish it out with a gold medal.”
As for the USA’s semifinal contest, Close added: “We definitely could have cleaned things up from an offensive perspective, but I was proud that our defense was our anchor.”
Citron connected on an and-one for the game’s first points and the Americans never trailed. With the score knotted at 5-all with 5:55 on the first-quarter clock, the USA closed the quarter on an 8-0 spurt to take a 13-5 lead after the first frame.
The U.S. expanded its lead into double digits and was ahead 27-15 with about four minutes to play before halftime when another quarter-ending 8-0 run sent the U.S. to the locker room with a 20-point, 35-15 advantage. The final four points came from Citron, who scored 11 points by the midway mark.
“Since our offense wasn’t flowing, defense wins games,” said Feagin on her team’s first-half play. “So, we played defense as a team and came out at the half with that big lead.”
Neither team shot well in the first half, with the USA connecting on just 29.5% (13-44 FGs), while its defense held Hungary to an ice-cold 17.7% (6-34 FGs) from the floor.
“Hungary doubled the post and crowded anything we got near the basket, and we just didn’t deliver on some of those,” said Close about Hungary’s first-half defense. “They were extremely physical, and the refs let it go on both sides, so I didn’t think it was unfair. We just didn’t adjust very well. You just have to anchor down on defense and not let the frustrations on offense effect your defense, and I was really proud of how they managed that. We held them to 15 points in the first half and still scored 35.”
Clark scored 11 points in the third quarter, which saw the U.S. improve its shooting in the stanza to 50% (10-20 FGs) as the red, white and blue outscored the hosts 28-17 to take an overwhelming 63-32 advantage into the final stanza.
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